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Ephraim Fischbach, a physics professor at Purdue, was looking into the rate of radioactive decay of several isotopes as a possible source of random numbers generated without any human input.
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Checking data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and the Federal Physical and Technical Institute in Germany, they came across something even more surprising: long-term observation of the decay rate of silicon-32 and radium-226 seemed to show a small seasonal variation. The decay rate was ever so slightly faster in winter than in summer.
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"Everyone thought it must be due to experimental mistakes, because we're all brought up to believe that decay rates are constant," Sturrock said.
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On Dec 13, 2006, the sun itself provided a crucial clue, when a solar flare sent a stream of particles and radiation toward Earth. Purdue nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins, while measuring the decay rate of manganese-54, a short-lived isotope used in medical diagnostics, noticed that the rate dropped slightly during the flare, a decrease that started about a day and a half before the flare.
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The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements
The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements
http://www.physorg.com/news201795438.html
Re: The strange case of solar flares and radioactive element
Innnnnnteresting. Neutrino sensitivity?DeltaV wrote:http://www.physorg.com/news201795438.html
...
Ephraim Fischbach, a physics professor at Purdue, was looking into the rate of radioactive decay of several isotopes as a possible source of random numbers generated without any human input.
...
Checking data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and the Federal Physical and Technical Institute in Germany, they came across something even more surprising: long-term observation of the decay rate of silicon-32 and radium-226 seemed to show a small seasonal variation. The decay rate was ever so slightly faster in winter than in summer.
...
"Everyone thought it must be due to experimental mistakes, because we're all brought up to believe that decay rates are constant," Sturrock said.
...
On Dec 13, 2006, the sun itself provided a crucial clue, when a solar flare sent a stream of particles and radiation toward Earth. Purdue nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins, while measuring the decay rate of manganese-54, a short-lived isotope used in medical diagnostics, noticed that the rate dropped slightly during the flare, a decrease that started about a day and a half before the flare.
...
Vae Victis
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kunkmiester
- Posts: 892
- Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2009 3:51 pm
- Contact:
A pity it will probably take years to get the pieces put together. There's dozens of little things like this, all over the place. Eventually it'll be established that too many things don't fit the pattern we've built, and we'll get a new theory that will explain things better. Much like relativity and quantum theory did, it'll change perceptions of the universe, and we'll get new ideas for new toys.
Makes me curious. What does the timeline of paradigm changes like relativity look like? How long is it usually between revolutionary ideas like that?
Makes me curious. What does the timeline of paradigm changes like relativity look like? How long is it usually between revolutionary ideas like that?
Evil is evil, no matter how small
John Cramer does a bimonthly article for Analog called "Alternate View". He addressed this for a 2009 edition.
http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw147.html
He offers no hard answers but does propose an experiment. He points out the right vehicle for the test is a space probe in a highly eccentric orbit around the Sun, so that the solar radiation varies greatly and repeatedly. He suggests the output of a radionuclide power source should vary if the effect is real. A number of missions are underway with such power sources, and we should know soon if there are positive results. He doubts it. If the effects are real, they should be fairly pronounced on these missions, and would show up in power output, which is closely monitored.
http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw147.html
He offers no hard answers but does propose an experiment. He points out the right vehicle for the test is a space probe in a highly eccentric orbit around the Sun, so that the solar radiation varies greatly and repeatedly. He suggests the output of a radionuclide power source should vary if the effect is real. A number of missions are underway with such power sources, and we should know soon if there are positive results. He doubts it. If the effects are real, they should be fairly pronounced on these missions, and would show up in power output, which is closely monitored.
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MetaThought
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 10:13 pm
They're talking about the decay rate of silicon-32 and radium-226 varying, neither of which are used in radionuclide power sources.Tom Ligon wrote:He suggests the output of a radionuclide power source should vary if the effect is real. A number of missions are underway with such power sources, and we should know soon if there are positive results. He doubts it. If the effects are real, they should be fairly pronounced on these missions, and would show up in power output, which is closely monitored.
Si-32 decays by beta radiation, power sources generally decay by alpha.
Ra-226 has a half life of 1601 years, too long for a power source.
Is it so hard to believe that different isotopes would have different variations in decay rate ?
I think a question like that is really hard to answer with any kind of meaningful response, because there's so many variables.kunkmiester wrote:Makes me curious. What does the timeline of paradigm changes like relativity look like? How long is it usually between revolutionary ideas like that?
I mean, think about it this way - in the past 200-300 years we've made what, 100x or 1000x more scientific progress than in the preceding 50,000 years?
Even now, if we had better educational systems worldwide, and spent more money on scientific R&D (so that we had more, better educated people, working on science at a faster rate), we'd likely get breakthroughs quicker.
I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the rate of scientific progress is largely a function of cultural/societal/economic variables more than anything else. There might be one other variable - how frequently potential 'geniuses' are born into the population - but that might be a function of how much population there is worldwide, birth rates, and what average infant mortality and life expectency is. Since that is higher now that at any time in previous history, there's probably potential geniuses being born into the population more frequently, and more likely to survive into adulthood.
However, it's still entirely possible that, with various disasters, genocides, wars, abortion, etc, that the next Albert Einstein died as an infant or embryo.
I would have agreed with you a dozen years ago. But now I have begun to think that "more education and more R&D" is precisely the wrong way to go. What builds the impenetrable barrier against scientific progress is the large and ever growing number of degreed idiots that take over all the scientific institutions. "Those who can, do (2 or 3 (dozen?) in a generation). Those that can't, teach (thousands upon thousands). Those that can't teach administer (millions) and build empires that have impenetrable boundaries and boarder guards and spies who sabotage those who can.jsbiff wrote: Even now, if we had better educational systems worldwide, and spent more money on scientific R&D (so that we had more, better educated people, working on science at a faster rate), we'd likely get breakthroughs quicker.
We made most of our progress when science was left to the rich amateurs who WANTED, who NEEDED to do prove something. No amount of "education and R&D" can change that "2 or 3 (dozen) in a generation".
Sorry, just feeling a bit sour right now!
That is the cool thing about amateur fusion and programs like the Intel Science Talent Search.
I now know just how bad my high school Advanced Placement science courses were. I taught electronics to my physics teacher. Our chemistry teacher turned out to be a chemistry reject who botched his thesis project. Biology was pretty good. We had an extracurricular Fortran programming course that was extraordinary for its time (circa 1970). But our school did nothing to promote science fair participation.
When you look at what the science fair finalists have done, you realize these future Einsteins can whup their teachers. Good thing, too, or science is doomed.
The sad part is that when you track the careers of the Intel kids, they frequently wind up with business degrees.
Fusioneers seem to stick with science, fusion and plasma physics in particular.
I now know just how bad my high school Advanced Placement science courses were. I taught electronics to my physics teacher. Our chemistry teacher turned out to be a chemistry reject who botched his thesis project. Biology was pretty good. We had an extracurricular Fortran programming course that was extraordinary for its time (circa 1970). But our school did nothing to promote science fair participation.
When you look at what the science fair finalists have done, you realize these future Einsteins can whup their teachers. Good thing, too, or science is doomed.
The sad part is that when you track the careers of the Intel kids, they frequently wind up with business degrees.
Fusioneers seem to stick with science, fusion and plasma physics in particular.
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CaptainBeowulf
- Posts: 498
- Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am
Historically, it's the nature of human institutions to build dogmas/doctrines that then become very resistant to change. Once science replaced religion as the primary explanation for how the world works in the West, it was probably inevitable that this would happen. However, due to the scientific principle, you can still shake up the whole system if you can definitively prove your case. It's just that you may have to do a whole lot of work in obscurity first, and you may have to survive with no funding. Still better than being threatened with (literal) burning at the stake.
Of course this leads to secretiveness, as people don't want to be (figuratively) burned at the stake by their peers for presenting an unorthodox approach without all their facts straight.
As for how often these breakthroughs come, well, I agree that you can't really define this, but you can give it a very rough go:
1. Early humans - They probably just figured "s**t happens"
2. Polytheistic societies - Gods, spirits, and demons make everything happen; ie. lightning is shot down by an angry God like Zeus/Jupiter, wind happens when a god blows at you, etc.
3. Classical philosophers - Basic forms of matter - fire, earth, air, water
4. Christianity - How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
5. Galileo - reinterpretation of the solar system/celestial mechanics
6. Newton - basic interpretation of gravity, Newtonian physics
7/8. Einstein and other 20th century physicists - classical relativity and quantum theory
It can be seen that #2, #3 and #4 overlapped. Also, #7/8 includes classical and quantum theory. So you can actually have multiple new paradigms at the same time.
The general pattern seems to be accelerating, with the cycles shrinking from millenia to centuries. #5-#8 happen in the last five centuries, so given the accelerating pattern we might expect 5 or 6, maybe 7 scientific "revolutions" by the year 2500. On average, this would mean 1 per century or more. However, historically change seems to tend to happen in bursts, rather than at a uniform pace. If you plotted scientific "advancement" over a very long time scale, you would probably get an accelerating curve (I'm assuming you could do this objectively, which you probably couldn't - you'd have to pick and choose your parameters almost arbitrarily to define what you meant by "advancement" in order to get a manageable data set). However, on a micro scale it would look like a bunch of spikes and dips.
Of course this leads to secretiveness, as people don't want to be (figuratively) burned at the stake by their peers for presenting an unorthodox approach without all their facts straight.
As for how often these breakthroughs come, well, I agree that you can't really define this, but you can give it a very rough go:
1. Early humans - They probably just figured "s**t happens"
2. Polytheistic societies - Gods, spirits, and demons make everything happen; ie. lightning is shot down by an angry God like Zeus/Jupiter, wind happens when a god blows at you, etc.
3. Classical philosophers - Basic forms of matter - fire, earth, air, water
4. Christianity - How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
5. Galileo - reinterpretation of the solar system/celestial mechanics
6. Newton - basic interpretation of gravity, Newtonian physics
7/8. Einstein and other 20th century physicists - classical relativity and quantum theory
It can be seen that #2, #3 and #4 overlapped. Also, #7/8 includes classical and quantum theory. So you can actually have multiple new paradigms at the same time.
The general pattern seems to be accelerating, with the cycles shrinking from millenia to centuries. #5-#8 happen in the last five centuries, so given the accelerating pattern we might expect 5 or 6, maybe 7 scientific "revolutions" by the year 2500. On average, this would mean 1 per century or more. However, historically change seems to tend to happen in bursts, rather than at a uniform pace. If you plotted scientific "advancement" over a very long time scale, you would probably get an accelerating curve (I'm assuming you could do this objectively, which you probably couldn't - you'd have to pick and choose your parameters almost arbitrarily to define what you meant by "advancement" in order to get a manageable data set). However, on a micro scale it would look like a bunch of spikes and dips.
That's the assumption behind the Techno-Rapture aka The Singularity. I tend to discount Techno-Transhuman equivalents to the Ascension of Jesus Christ into Heaven as the religious beliefs they are.CaptainBeowulf wrote:The general pattern seems to be accelerating, with the cycles shrinking from millenia to centuries.
This assumes two things.CaptainBeowulf wrote:#5-#8 happen in the last five centuries, so given the accelerating pattern we might expect 5 or 6, maybe 7 scientific "revolutions" by the year 2500.
1) There are 5-7 additional "levels" of physics to discover;
2) Western civilization and the thought forms it has developed will remain intellectually vital enough to push forward and explore those assumed to be present "levels."
Both are doubtful. Western civilization is getting "tired," and is looking for its final forms, after which it will sit back and rest on its laurels until its cultural extinction.
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket ... chohistory
Scroll down to "Cities in Flight" and compare the Epochs.
Vae Victis
Yes. It turns out that the best of the next generation are generally taught by the best of the previous generation.KitemanSA wrote:I would have agreed with you a dozen years ago. But now I have begun to think that "more education and more R&D" is precisely the wrong way to go. What builds the impenetrable barrier against scientific progress is the large and ever growing number of degreed idiots that take over all the scientific institutions. "Those who can, do (2 or 3 (dozen?) in a generation). Those that can't, teach (thousands upon thousands). Those that can't teach administer (millions) and build empires that have impenetrable boundaries and boarder guards and spies who sabotage those who can.jsbiff wrote: Even now, if we had better educational systems worldwide, and spent more money on scientific R&D (so that we had more, better educated people, working on science at a faster rate), we'd likely get breakthroughs quicker.
We made most of our progress when science was left to the rich amateurs who WANTED, who NEEDED to do prove something. No amount of "education and R&D" can change that "2 or 3 (dozen) in a generation".
Sorry, just feeling a bit sour right now! :(
More funding: feeding the second best does not generally have a good rate of return. The problem is: you never know when 15th best will have a #1 idea. It happens - just often enough to make it hard to calculate. Because the rewards can be very great.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.