Tag changed to [TECH] That's utterly stunning. And scary. This could lead to an unravelling of much "received knowledge" - or be yet another curiosity that gets filed away for future understanding. I've always understood that it was taken as 'holy writ' that decay rates in the absence of well understood perturbing affects were inviolably constant. The suggestion here is that many and perhaps all decay rates are affected this way. Looking at the graphs there seems to be a clear (to me) offset of the phase of the decay rate variation and the earth sun distance. That doesn't make sense (or makes even less sense) unless there is some fundamental sun distance variation that is also offset. Here is an excellent commentary that looks at some implications, including the possibility of variations being caused by alterations in the fine structure 'constant'. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) http://www.blog.thecastsite.com/?p=95&show=slide And more reasonably good comment http://arxivblog.com/?p=596 Astro Physics archive http://www.citebase.org/abstract?id=oai:arXiv.org:0808.3283 Russell From: "Chris Smolinski" To: Sent: Saturday, August 30, 2008 3:03 AM Subject: [OT] Evidence for Correlations Between Nuclear Decay Rates andEarth-Sun Distance Evidence for Correlations Between Nuclear Decay Rates and Earth-Sun Distance Unexplained periodic fluctuations in the decay rates of 32 Si and 226 Ra have been reported by groups at Brookhaven National Laboratory ( 32 Si), and at the Physikalisch-Technische- Bundesandstalt in Germany( 226 Ra). We show from an analysis of the raw data in these experiments that the observed fluctuations are strongly correlated in time, not only with each other, but also with the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Some implications of these results are also discussed, including the suggestion that discrepancies in published half-life determinations for these and other nuclides may be attributable in part to differences in solar activity during the course of the various experiments, or to seasonal variations in fundamental constants. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0808.3283v1 -- --- Chris Smolinski Black Cat Systems http://www.blackcatsystems.com -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist