Solar flares affect radiometric decay rates?

According to the article, the suspected culprit is neutrinos. Extra neutrinos separate from increased solar activity would not cook anything. On the other hand, neutrinos don't seem to interact with much of anything.

Also there is this line from the article.

quote:

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If the mystery particle is not a neutrino, "It would have to be something we don't know about, an unknown particle that is also emitted by the sun and has this effect, and that would be even more remarkable," Sturrock said.

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If that time frame is on the order of tens of thousands of years, but a far lesser time frame would be enough force close evolution.

Interestingly enough though, I don't think there is a case that the changes affect radio-carbon dating at all.

Jar addressed half of your post. The sun is actually closer to the earth the first few days in January of each year than at any other time during the year. January is not during the winter in the southern hemisphere.

But I think the "at least" portion is the more important issue and my understanding is the same as yours.

It is true that during the winter, in either hemisphere, we receive solar radiation, and presumably neutrinos at a more oblique angle. I would expect that the seasonal variation due to earth's tilt, and not the distance to the sun would have the larger effect.

However the amount of season variation would depend on your latitude. Less variation near the equator.

Citation please...

I cannot find any reports from dozens of labs, or even a single lab other than the original suspects verifying this phenomenon. The only papers I can locate using google scholar were written by Jenkins and/or Fischbach. Searching the web is useless for the obvious reasons.

Where is the data from a place other than Purdue or Stanford?

That's fine. I think the debunking paper was pretty good, but since they did not look at the same isotopes, I do discount it a bit. Of course none of the studies are looking at nuclides that are used in radiometric dating.

But:

In particular what I was looking for was not just verifications of the effect, but verifications that you could actually predict solar flares using the effect. Those are the results you said were repeated by many labs so that the concept of predicting storms with radioactivity increases or decreases was pretty well accepted. I don't believe that statement to be correct.

I am looking for support for the argument that the sun emits something that causes decay rates to decrease as opposed to :

1) the sun emits mystery X that causes decay rates to increase
2) decreased production of the suns emission of mystery X causes decay rates to decrease.

Only the solar flare stuff provides any possible indication, and even then, we don't know what actually causes the change in decay rates, so we cannot rule out possibilities 1 and 2.

That paper you provided in the previous thread regarding the variation of decay rates with shape did not prove much of anything. There was nearly as much variation in the decay rates measured for a single shape as their was between shapes, and the variation was not in a consistent direction. At best the paper indicates that a possibility worth additional investigation.

Seriously? Daily is not good enough for an effect that allegedly has an annual variation? I don't see any reason why daily measurements would not sufficient absent a daily variation of a similar or larger amplitude. Can you make an argument that it daily measurements of sufficient accuracy are insufficient?

I have a problem with that rationale. First, there is supposed to be an annual variation. As long as flares don't appear like clockwork, taking data once a day should be plenty of data for verifying an annual variation.

I agree that it would be possible to miss out on seeing a flare prediction, but quite frankly, that's the least well document part of this whole thing.

Yes, they do indeed have a patent on that concept. I am patent attorney and I have reviewed the prosecution of their patent, and I can assure you that their patent is not very strong evidence that the phenomena actually exists. It is instead evidence that they submitted affidavits swearing that the phenomenon exists. The patent examiner was extremely dubious that the sun could effect decay rates, but the examiner eventually dropped his objections after the affidavits were provided and the file was appealed over his head.

I'll take a second look and see if any useful references are provided in the patent prosecution file.

Here is what you posted. Not sure what other interpretation to give:

Edited by NoNukes, : grammar correction

No thank you. I appreciate you clarifying your position.

Well, I am not sure I agree, but I can accept that the ball is in my court to demonstrate the lack of acceptance. Perhaps I will take a stab at it after I review what is available.

ABE:

What I am currently looking at are the proceedings of the US Patent Office which granted the patent you mentioned, and the proceedings of the European Patent Office (EPO) which did not grant the application. I find the EPO analysis interesting. You can find it yourself here:

https://register.epo.org/application?number=EP08863637&ln...

Look for a documents explaining the reasons for not granting the patent.

First some legalese.

In both the US and European application, the claims of the patent involve detecting radiation from a radioactive element and using a computer to correlate the detected radiation with a solar flare (that follows the act of detecting).

In order to be granted a patent, the inventor is required to disclose exactly how the invention worked. In their application, Fishback and Jenkins disclose the details of exactly one solar flare event, and one set of decay data. No details whatsoever are provided for telling how to correlate such data to solar flares.

The EPO found the disclosure to be insufficient to allow the public to actually build a solar flare predictor because of this lack of detail.

In thinking about this issue, remember that the F&J insist that sometimes solar flares are preceded by an increase in decay rates, and sometimes a decrease. Perhaps these "predictions" are of the Nostradamus variety, where the prediction is only recognized after the event actually happens.

The EPO also found the efforts to blame the result on neutrinos, which was what the inventors described in the application, almost laughable (although they were able to avoid putting their guffaws into their official response). Apparently the inventors are still telling their attorney that neutrinos are responsible, something that nobody else seems to believe anymore.

Anyhow, the Fishbach and Jenkins did disclose quite a few references, including a few they had nothing to do with, and I'll discuss them if we are still interested in this topic.

ABE:

I just realized that I know how to build a solar flare predictor. Just build an alarm that beeps once a day. I'm sure that every single solar flare will be preceded by at least a beep or two.

Edited by NoNukes, : Add some detail

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

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I'm tutoring some students this summer on the topic of classical physics. I am using the Openstax textbook, "College Physics", developed by Rice University as a reference. Rice says that at least 55 universities are using the textbook for a course.

This excellent text book is available online for free. Chapters 30 and onward deal with nuclear physics, with chapter 31 dealing most directly with the subject on which you are speaking. Well, at least as best as I can tell.

As Beyonce once put it, "Let me upgrade you."

The book you have should be fine. What does it say about "charges of photons"? or negative polarization of such?

ABE:

In your textbook, you might start with chapters 32 and 33. Light polarization is discussed in section 33.5.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No, the photons could not have been electrons.

Yes. E&M radiation can be emitted whenever a charge is accelerated, including during deceleration. For example Bremsstrahlung radiation can be emitted when the path of an electron is changed by interaction with a heavy nucleus.

But I think OS's confusion is far more pervasive than a mere confusion of photoelectrons with photons. For example, what is he saying about a laser beam attracting metal? About negatively and positively charged polarization, among other things? Why does he think metal is positively charged?

About 2 out of every three of your posts contain incorrect statements about physics. Many of your posts contain two or more demonstrably wrong statements. Why is that?

Exactly. Nobody is that stupid.

As ringo pointed out, if we allow OS the use of some poetry, we could interpret 'hold the universe together' to be a description of chemical bonding. If we do that we can find some truth in his post. And is there in truth no beauty?

That still leaves a couple of handfuls of manure in his post. Electrons prevent positrons from repelling too much? A complete denial that negatively charged particles repel each other? No easy justification for any of that stuff. Plenty of ugly.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Ouch, CS. That link goes to a very bad place.

Actually, I don't mind the cranks so much as long as they do the job properly. The best cranks don't just spout bad science. They also have a fully developed philosophy behind the science that can be fun to probe, poke at, and laugh about dismissively.

But just spouting a couple of silly incoherent concepts or denying one or two well known physical laws does not entertain. If OS has a framework he'd like to discuss hopefully we'll get a topic started to discuss it.