But practical pluses aside, why is this happening? The seasonal fluctuations suggested the Sun could be involved somehow, and the solar flare connection confirmed it. The scientists speculated that solar neutrinos, the nearly massless particles created as byproducts of the sun's fusing of hydrogen atoms into helium, might be causing these variations.

The fact that these neutrinos pass straight through the Earth with ease fit well with the fact that the decay rates were changing even at night, when the entire planet was between the radioactive isotopes and the Sun.

Once the researchers conclusively ruled out environmental influences, that left the Sun as the only possible cause of the decay variations. They also found that the amount of change varied in time with the Earth's orbit - the effect was greater when the orbit brought the Earth closer to the Sun and thus into contact with more neutrinos.

That's where renowned Stanford physics professor Peter Sturrock entered the picture. Confronted with this mystery, he advised the researchers to test how the decay fluctuations correlated with the Sun's own rotation. They found the decay rates recurred every 33 days, which didn't quite fit with the Sun's known surface rotation length of 28 days. But the neutrinos wouldn't be coming from the surface - they would be coming from deep inside the core. Unlikely as it might seem, the sun's core must be rotating a little slower than its surface, apparently once every 33 days.

"It's an effect that no one yet understands. Theorists are starting to say, 'What's going on?' But that's what the evidence points to. It's a challenge for the physicists and a challenge for the solar people too. [If it's not neutrinos,] 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."

It’s already been proven that the sun’s mass warps time, bends light waves and accounts for mutation of species on Earth. Now this new force may be directly interacting with matter in a way that could not only change Mankind’s understanding of physics, but change Mankind itself…and not necessarily in a beneficial way.

In fact, some evidence of time dilation has been gleaned from close observation of the decay rate. If particles interacting with the matter are not the cause—and matter is being affected by a new force of nature-then time itself may be speeding up and there’s no way to stop it.

Most neutrinos passing through the Earth emanate from the Sun. About 65 billion (6.5×1010) solar neutrinos per second pass through every square centimeter perpendicular to the direction of the Sun in the region of the Earth.[2]

Originally posted by ConstantConfusion3
Common sense tells me, if these particles cause a slight decay rate change in radioactive isotopes being studied in labs, and humans have radioactive elements naturally found in each of our bodies, it SHOULD be effecting us in SOME way.

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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.

If this apparent relationship between flares and decay rates proves true, it could lead to a method of predicting solar flares prior to their occurrence

Recent results suggest the possibility that decay rates might have a weak dependence (0.5% or less) on environmental factors. It has been suggested that measurements of decay rates of silicon-32, manganese-54, and radium-226 exhibit small seasonal variations (of the order of 0.1%), proposed to be related to either solar flare activity or distance from the Sun. However, such measurements are highly susceptible to systematic errors, and a subsequent paper has found no evidence for such correlations in six other isotopes, and sets upper limits on the size of any such effects.

New system could predict solar flares, give advance warning August 13, 2012 by Emil Venere (Phys.org) -- Researchers may have discovered a new method to predict solar flares more than a day before they occur, providing advance warning to help protect satellites, power grids and astronauts from potentially dangerous radiation. Read more at: phys.org...

Originally posted by MrInquisitive
reply to post by Panic2k11

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If it is indeed seasonal, then it seems like the most likely explanation is that it is a relativistic effect, i.e. the distance to the sun, as the closer an object gets to a large mass, the larger the time dilation; this is the same as when an object speeds up.

And that's the problem with reports of studies like the one mentioned in this thread. The researchers don't mention whether they considered this relativistic effect.

Originally posted by ConstantConfusion3

Read more at: phys.org...

The findings agree with data previously collected at the Brookhaven National Laboratory regarding the decay rate of chlorine 36; changes in the decay rate were found to match changes in the Earth-sun distance and Earth's exposure to different parts of the sun itself, Fischbach said.

Further research is needed to confirm the findings and to expand the work using more sensitive equipment, he said.

Originally posted by MrInquisitive
reply to post by Panic2k11

---

If it is indeed seasonal, then it seems like the most likely explanation is that it is a relativistic effect, i.e. the distance to the sun, as the closer an object gets to a large mass, the larger the time dilation; this is the same as when an object speeds up.

And that's the problem with reports of studies like the one mentioned in this thread. The researchers don't mention whether they considered this relativistic effect.