Article

2008-09-03 Science & Technology

Nuclear Decay Rates May Not Be A Constant

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Posted by Anonymoose 2008-09-03 10:02|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 Boy, that's going to effect the specification alignments on the warp coil. Better let Geordi know down in engineering.

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-09-03 10:12|| 2008-09-03 10:12|| Front Page Top

#2 Hmmm - I always thought that decay rates were random for individual atoms, but statistically constant for large numbers of atoms over long time periods. I'd love to see the data.

Posted by Spot">Spot 2008-09-03 10:49|| 2008-09-03 10:49|| Front Page Top

#3 What would be the effect on the nuclear power plants on deep space explorers? If the small variations in distance from the sun generate measureable variations in decay rate, will the Uranium (or whatever) in the generators either go dead or explode violently beyond the solar system?

Posted by Glenmore 2008-09-03 11:01|| 2008-09-03 11:01|| Front Page Top

#4 Geordi will just reverse the polarity. Things will be fine. He does that all the time.

Posted by Steve White 2008-09-03 11:13|| 2008-09-03 11:13|| Front Page Top

#5 Wow. Solar activity influence decay rates? Sun spots affect it?

Yet solar activity does not do anything to the global climate compared to human greenhouse gas emissions. According to the "climate change" high priests.

All that aside, this is quite odd, and may have impacts on other things, like carbon dating, which assumes a constant half-life decay rate.

Posted by OldSpook 2008-09-03 11:17|| 2008-09-03 11:17|| Front Page Top

#6 #3, I wonder if that could influence the design output of an atomic power supply (if it doesn't explode or die(grin))?

Posted by tipover 2008-09-03 11:21|| 2008-09-03 11:21|| Front Page Top

#7 OldSpook: This can have strong implications throughout science. Not just carbon dating, but nuclear clocks and timers, nuclear medicine, quantum and particle physics, and the list goes on and on.

Science is very reliant on constants, of which there are not that many in the universe. If one turns out to be a variable, it can throw a monkey wrench into the machinery.

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-09-03 11:57|| 2008-09-03 11:57|| Front Page Top

#8 This will have very interesting impacts on the field of geology, DEPENDING on the variation. If the variation is relative tiny over the course of geologic time, ie 1-2 millions years difference over billions, as geologists, we're gonna mostly say, "Meh. Who cares." But if it's alot of variance, that's going to have some serious implications. Will have to bring this to the attention of the professors.

Posted by Silentbrick">Silentbrick 2008-09-03 13:36|| 2008-09-03 13:36|| Front Page Top

#9 Silentbrick: at the moment it appears to average out over a period of about a year.

But then again, that's knowing nothing about the causation behind the effect.

Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2008-09-03 13:58|| 2008-09-03 13:58|| Front Page Top

#10 Glenmore, A hint--except in a few special cases where beta decay can be influenced by powerful electric fields

Wouldn't you suspect that may be the case here? Neutrino flux idea is a dead trail.

Posted by Spike Uniter 2008-09-03 14:44|| 2008-09-03 14:44|| Front Page Top

#11 So Voyager, Pioneer etc... all carry reactors on their exit from the solar system.

Any way to infer rates from their power fluxes?

Posted by 3dc 2008-09-03 19:20|| 2008-09-03 19:20|| Front Page Top

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