JohnW
Posts: 3217
Joined: Aug. 2006
|
| Quote (Peter Henderson @ July 31 2009,09:01) | Raised by a YEC over on Premier's forum:
http://www.newscientist.com/article....le.html
| Quote | Nuclear decay puzzle
30 July 2009 by Rudi Van Nieuwenhove, Halden, Norway
Magazine issue 2719. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
For similar stories, visit the Letters Topic Guide
Working at a nuclear research centre as I do, I found Justin Mullins's article on seasonal variations in radioactive decay most intriguing (27 June, p 42).
I remember a previous New Scientist article (21 October 2006, p 36) reporting that Claus Rolfs and colleagues had shown they could modify the radioactive decay of certain radioisotopes by encasing them in metal and chilling them close to absolute zero. In a letter responding to that article (11 November 2006, p 26), I mentioned work reported in 1994 by Otto Reifenschweiler, who found that the radioactive decay of tritium absorbed in titanium particles could be reduced by 40 per cent at temperatures between 115 °C and 275 °C (Physics Letters A, vol 184, p 149).
The most dramatic change in radioactive decay has, however, recently been observed by Fabio Cardone and others on the decay of thorium-228 by using ultrasonic cavitation in water (Physics Letters A, vol 373, p 1956). In this case, the radioactive decay rate was increased by a whopping factor of 10,000.
It is difficult to believe that all these observations are due to instrumental or systematic errors. The time is ripe to investigate these effects in depth.
Radioactive decay constants seem not to be constant at all. Perhaps that's not so surprising, since radioactive decay is a result of random particle interactions between the surrounding vacuum and the nucleus. Changing the vacuum state will inevitably change the radioactive decay |
although the letter writer appears to be citing fairly old news. Anyone know anything about the above and Rudi Van Nieuwenhove ? Is he a YEC. I would imagine if the research above is peer reviewed it wouldn't be too long before it makes it's way onto YEC websites, thus making the RATE project redundant. |
Even if this is true (and if a YEC said it was raining, I wouldn't believe him/her until I'd got verification), there's not a lot of evidence for either temperatures <1K or intense ultrasonics in Earth's past. The explanation is still essentially "poof!"
--------------
Math is just a language of reality. Its a waste of time to know it. - Robert Byers
There isn't any probability that the letter d is in the word "mathematics"... Â The correct answer would be "not even 0" - JoeG
|
