Radioactive decay rate change, can YOU feel it??

reply to post by Endure


I think the only conclusion you can draw is "It might be 0.05% off more than we thought, depending on whether this effect is real or not". To go past that would require more understanding than we have.

It would be nice to have that understanding, because you might do something really useful with this if you could engineer it.

reply to post by Bedlam


No doubt.

Originally posted by Bluesma
I am not going to dance with you on your challenge to the OP that she "prove" her inner sensations to you.

She only would need that to make a hypothesis that involves others. When she makes an assertion that everyone must feel something during a solar flare, well I'll back you on your retort....

Guess what? I often feel sluggish when it is gray and cold out..... good luck proving me wrong on that.

Actually the "gray sky blues" can get serious enough with some people that they seek treatment by a doctor and treatment is available, so we must distinguish between ordinary claims, which that is, and extraordinary claims, which is that the human body can at least in some people be an extraordinarily sensitive solar flare detector. I have no doubts that the OP feels certain things. For example, let's look at this for an analogy:

Streetlights go out when you walk under them
In this case the premise is that you walk under a street light and it goes out. From this observation, some people infer a causal factor that somehow their body is interacting with the streetlight and is the reason the light goes out. And when this happens multiple times on a long walk, surely the correlation becomes incontrovertible, right? And why do I not doubt this happens to others? Because it happens to me too!

But if you take a skeptical approach to the causal relationships and science involved, you can explain why this happens without any causal relationship. Some lights tend to periodically go out, so inevitably some will go out when you happen to walk under them, and in all likelihood would have gone out at the same time even if you didn't.

So I believe the OP feels certain things just as I believe people's claims that streetlights sometimes go out when they walk under them. What I don't believe without further evidence is that there is any foundation to their beliefs in some kind of causal relationship they have attributed to the experiences they have noted.

However, if the OP starts posting in this thread each time they "feel that solar flare feeling" and then 30-39 hours after each of those posts, a solar flare occurs, that would be some very impressive evidence indeed. I'm not even sure the scientists can make this prediction based on the data I've seen, but by all means they too should go ahead and make their predictions so we can see how many of them are right. Maybe they can make good predictions, and maybe the OP can too, but we will never know if either is the case until we see the real-time predictions and then see what happens later statistically on multiple predictions.

Originally posted by Bedlam

Ah. Since you left no attribution, I searched for the words in the quote and that's what came up most often.

Yes I did leave an attribution. I see now that there is something that went wrong with the link I put there, but in any case, you can see the address written out- you can copy and paste it, you can see in the post what site the quotes came from!

I have many links on this subject, some more technical than others, but these were simplified for a quick reference for the layman, and I didn't know at that point this was to become a debate- I figured if it interested people further, they could do further research themselves.

Now, I only have minute, and I need to go, but will come back and include more reliable info and argument.

Originally posted by Bluesma

Yes I did leave an attribution. I see now that there is something that went wrong with the link I put there...

Yep, you did. My eyes sorta elided it as jumble at the end. My bad.

Got the kid to school. Now-

The reason I put up that particular article from Project World Awareness (when the same was repeated in many sites, as you point out, often word for word) is because that particular article started with-

Check links please…This is not a scientific paper…link at bottom for source…Thank you

(I found the integrity nice )
Further more, if you go to the bottom, you find links to explore on the subject-
Discovery News
Softpedia
POPSCI



Original Announcement
Cornell U Library Study of the dependence of 198Au half-life on source geometry

It was updated at the bottom, which was the best part of that particular article! It says-

“Scientists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technologyand Purdue University have ruled out neutrino flux as a cause of previously observed fluctuations in nuclear decay rates.
The paper can be found here on arXiv. Slashdot has previously covered theoriginal announcement and followed up with the skepticism of other scientists.”

This has links to the following studies-
Follow Up On Solar Neutrinos and Radioactive Decay

Scientists Confirm Nuclear Decay Rate Constancy

It was all there, for anyone who wanted to look into it.

So the neutrinos have already been ruled out and the debate on whether you can experience them moving through your body is moot in this context- if one has particular sensations before or during a solar flare then they might be associated with something else entirely. And that something else might have something to do with the influence of the sun on decay rates... there might be correlation.

It hasn't been established yet. Is there a particle we haven't picked up on yet? Or some other mechanism?
It's not clear yet, so it certainly is still open for people to hypothesize about, make observations, and even their own experiments if they wish!

But I don't see many people like this woman would want to try the experiment of posting each time they get these sensations to see if they correspond with flares afterwards- not if they are going to get jumped on for it.

Originally posted by Bluesma
Got the kid to school. Now-

The reason I put up that particular article from Project World Awareness (when the same was repeated in many sites, as you point out, often word for word) is because that particular article started with-

Check links please…This is not a scientific paper…link at bottom for source…Thank you

(I found the integrity nice

)

Well, the first hit to jimmyprophet was sort of offputting, but WMA isn't much better. It's a hotbed of Bilderberg and Illuminati hype. Had you linked to something on Educate Yourself, Prison Planet or GLP I wouldn't have read it either. The article itself has a lot of woo sauce...

Now evidence has surfaced that something potentially more dangerous is happening deep within the hidden core of our life-giving star: never-before-seen particles—or some mysterious force—is being shot out from the sun and it’s hitting Earth.

Whatever it is, the evidence suggests it’s affecting all matter.

Strange and unknown

Alarmed physicists first became aware of this threat over the past several years. Initially dismissed as an anomaly, now frantic scientists are shooting e-mails back and forth to colleagues across the world attempting to grasp exactly what is happening to the sun.

...

Worst of all, if the decay rates of matter are being mutated then all matter on Earth is being affected including the matter that makes up life.

The mutation may go so far as to change the underlying reality of the quantum universe—and by extrapolation-the nature of life, the principles of physics, perhaps even the uniform flow of time.

With that sort of "information" presented, I generally shake my head and click it away into the cornfield. I'm not sure it makes the thing better, less egregious, or more honest to post a warning that it's probably bs and then graft a few bits of reference onto the end to try to give the thing some legitimacy. It might have been possible to cram more emotional hype per line, but you have to give the author credit for trying to max it out.

... if one has particular sensations before or during a solar flare then they might be associated with something else entirely.

My point entirely...

And that something else might have something to do with the influence of the sun on decay rates... there might be correlation.

It hasn't been established yet. Is there a particle we haven't picked up on yet? Or some other mechanism?
It's not clear yet, so it certainly is still open for people to hypothesize about, make observations, and even their own experiments if they wish!

Hopefully those experiments would be well constructed to exclude confounders, only change one variable at a time, be blinded somehow, and have sufficient power to reach a valid exclusion of the null hypothesis, but on a board where the "school girl microwave water experiment" is lauded as an example of scientific thinking, it's not likely.

But I don't see many people like this woman would want to try the experiment of posting each time they get these sensations to see if they correspond with flares afterwards- not if they are going to get jumped on for it.

Disagreeing with you isn't jumping on you. If you say "I feel down because the beta decay rate of 1E-29th of my atoms has changed by 0.05%", though, I'm going to snort.

Worse, human self-perception of mood is notoriously difficult to measure and is affected by such a HUGE range of things that it's not easy to spot that sort of influence in the data of hundreds of people, much less one. And how are you going to be sure that these people aren't looking at 'space weather' or what not to see how they should feel? I'm pretty sure ATS members are up to date on each and every solar flare - any one of them of significance is on the front page.

What might be interesting would be to see if there were some large study that had gone on for a long time wherein they rated people's moods every day for some other reason - and do a metaanalysis on it for trends near the eruptions of solar flares. THAT set of inputs won't be significantly affected by "knowing" they're supposed to be altered by pre-flare neutrinos or whatnot.

It still wouldn't tell you if it were something else, like ELF waves (actual ones this time), magnetotelluric currents caused by rippling of the magnetosphere or some other flare-associated phenomenon.

Sitting here thinking about it, it might be that you could look at the stock and commodities markets - a lot of the non-machine generated trades are based on "gut feeling", and you can often spot weather trends in the locale of the trading floor for individual commodities. If it's raining, they sell more, or trade less. You can ferret out a lunar cycle from the trade data too, if you look at enough data. It's faint, but it's there.

Originally posted by Bedlam
Had you linked to something on Educate Yourself, Prison Planet or GLP I wouldn't have read it either. The article itself has a lot of woo sauce...

Yes, the internet has a lot of woo. It is nice when they admit to it, and leave links for you to go looking for the real facts it was based upon. Look, you didn't have to read the article itself if you just read the top, and went directly to the bottom where the links were, and took off from there to look through other, more reputable, sources.

Hopefully those experiments would be well constructed to exclude confounders, only change one variable at a time, be blinded somehow, and have sufficient power to reach a valid exclusion of the null hypothesis, but on a board where the "school girl microwave water experiment" is lauded as an example of scientific thinking, it's not likely.

Agreed. This is not a scientific journal, it is not even a place where researchers or scientists are exchanging with peers their findings and on going controlled experiments. If that is what you are interested in, I would suggest trying other sites!

Disagreeing with you isn't jumping on you. If you say "I feel down because the beta decay rate of 1E-29th of my atoms has changed by 0.05%", though, I'm going to snort.

"Snorting" is a more accurate description than is "disagreeing".

The snorting type of reactions have the set back of often suppressing the curiosity and interest of people in the science, so that they do not desire to learn more,
and it sets a negative example of the scientific community: This is how people get the idea that "scientific minds are unethical minds"- they lack compassion, and sense of humanity (and those people turn then to things like religion, and MORE woo-woo...).

reply to post by ConstantConfusion3


I have been keeping track using calenders from 2011 then I check SOHO after the fact. All I can say is that I can absolutely feel it and it appears to coincide with solar activity and flares.

Coincidence? Unlikely.

Holy crap! I took a break from this thread yesterday, I don't enjoy stress...I come back, and WW3 has erupted in here!! The point of this thread was NOT to start a debate!

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WOULD LIKE TO ARGUE, I THINK THERE IS A FORUM FOR THAT.

This thread was initially intended to be a place for those of us who DO believe that there is SOMETHING going on, and to attempt to figure out HOW it's happening by exchanging ideas and theories. NOT to spend all of our energy defending our thoughts and therefore being unable to work together on this. I was not saying that EVERYONE is feeling SOMETHING from solar flares, but for those who DO I wanted to discuss this with THEM. I totally understand there being immense skepticism if you CAN'T feel anything. It IS insane, THAT is why I am looking for answers. Geeze, I could start a thread on being abducted by Bigfoot and get less flack than in here!! (No, I was not abducted by bigfoot.)

I understand that the radioactive decay rate change is by a tenth of a percent, THAT is why it is so concerning to me that some people (including myself) SEEM to FEEL it. That is why this thread was started.

I am respectfully asking those who have nothing to HELPFUL to contribute, please go argue elsewhere. THANK YOU to those who have been brave enough to post here at the risk of being eaten alive for your comments! Peace in the house people!! PLEASE!!

reply to post by ConstantConfusion3


I am contributing something that is helpful - a bit of ballast for the hyperbole, and some suggestions on what doesn't really work in terms of experiment.

Nothing said here was ad hominem, sidetracking, nor off point. Heck, it's not even that heated. However, two things which I'm sure the proprietors agree on - no forum here is "go away if you don't agree with me". That's more GLP style. Second, the S&T forums allow for more questioning of the basic precepts of posts than do, say, Skunk Works or Paranormal. I don't often go to those forums, because it's their area to speculate about just how true their anecdotal evidence is without someone like me asking them pesky questions like "what do you think density actually means?" or "why do you think EM works that way?".

You posted something about radioactive decay rate changes, which are not yet in the 'hard confirmed' area of science yet, but may be one day. Ok, no probs. That will, however, bring out the more savvy posters who question if decay rate change is even happening at all, or if Jenkins is having a measurement issue. You then posited that neutrino flux, or whatever it is that supposedly causes this change, if it's happening at all, might cause a mood change by altering the beta decay rates of whatever tiny amount of beta-decay prone isotopes your body might be carrying at present. That doesn't seem likely, if even possible, on the face of it. However, weirder things have happened - so I suggested that instead of collecting a half-dozen people's anecdotal evidence, collected after their having read the flare-o'-the-day post on the front page, you might have better luck if you looked at some data that was already available and correlating it against flares in the past.

That doesn't seem like WW3 to me, really. However, if somewhat informed dissent bothers you, it might be less stressful if you put things you don't want people to scrutinize over in one of the more free-form forums. You can, of course, do whatever pleases you, but S&T is more back-and-forth in general. In other words, this IS the forum for that.

Originally posted by ConstantConfusion3
Holy crap! I took a break from this thread yesterday, I don't enjoy stress...I come back, and WW3 has erupted in here!! The point of this thread was NOT to start a debate!

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WOULD LIKE TO ARGUE, I THINK THERE IS A FORUM FOR THAT.

This thread was initially intended to be a place for those of us who DO believe that there is SOMETHING going on, and to attempt to figure out HOW it's happening by exchanging ideas and theories.

I agree with Bedlam completely and I'm pretty sure the owners of this site agree too.

Most of us are here seeking the truth, however strange, weird or conspiratorial that may be. And a time proven method for arriving at the truth is to look at topics from various angles. A good scientist will do this on their own work and try to anticipate what criticisms they might face from other scientists so they can design their experiments to minimize those criticisms.

Originally posted by Bedlam
In other words, this IS the forum for that.

Yes, it is.

ConstantConfusion3, if you have no desire to hear different points of view from extremely knowledgeable and well-informed people like Bedlam and others who have contributed here, then it doesn't seem to me like you are seeking the truth, but only want to be surrounded by "yes-people" who will say what you want to hear and the truth be damned.

I mentioned the skunk works forum early in this thread and I agree with Bedlam, that you are less likely to get counter arguments to unfounded beliefs in that forum because it has no requirement that any evidence be presented for such highly speculative ideas.

If you think this was WWIII you obviously didn't visit the 9/11 forums before the new moderation rules there went into effect. Nothing in this thread has even come close to that. It seems like very level-headed, evidence-based debate.

reply to post by ConstantConfusion3

Does anyone know if there is research on the effects, if any, on the radioactive elements naturally found in the human body? Please post any links if so.

If you haven't done so already, then I would recommend research on this earth's Schumann resonance effect on our being which bears a symbiotic relationship between the human bio-electrical structure with our sun's and earth's harmonic field.
www.nasa.gov...

reply to post by PrimeLight


Well, really, no.

There's no such thing as a "harmonic field", to start with.

There's probably more bs about Schumann's resonance on the net than there is truth. To cut through the ballyhoo, what it is is this - the Sun creates the ionosphere by ripping electrons off of gas atoms primarily by means of UV. Being a plasma, the ionosphere is conductive at and below what's roughly equivalent to the HF radio band. The surface of the Earth is also essentially conductive. Between the two of them is the atmosphere which acts as a dielectric.

The entire system is thus a sphere-in-sphere waveguide. And the resonant frequency of that waveguide is Schumann's resonance. It's an electric bell, and lightning is the clapper.

Lightning discharges cause the resonance to 'ring'. That's it. It's straight forward second year fields theory.

The contribution from the Sun is to ionize the upper atmosphere. The contribution of the Earth is to be the inner sphere of the waveguide.

Much of anything past that is...woo.

Edit to add: the citation you linked to is simplistic but accurate. You should take some time and read it.

Sceptics are advised to be conservative when decrying Schumann too much... else you might intrude into and irk biology a bit...

There's a thing called Circadian Rhythms in biology

reply to post by Bedlam

Much of anything past that is...woo.

So we should all trust in you by what you guage as "woo"? There is plenty of "woo" elements on this current event horizon and that is why I pointed the OP to do their own research and come to their own conclusions. Thanks for providing your 'conclusions' in any case, though modern science has long been playing 'catchup' in attempting to verify by 'technological measurement' what ancient knowledge has long known and passed on generationally.

Originally posted by PrimeLight Thanks for providing your 'conclusions' in any case, though modern science has long been playing 'catchup' in attempting to verify by 'technological measurement' what ancient knowledge has long known and passed on generationally.

So, what 'ancient knowledge' came up with the existence of Schumann's resonance? Because, you know, that takes this "modern science" stuff you decry.

Don't you find it a bit disingenuous to talk about it while refusing to read your own cite and at the same time saying that science is bad?

At any rate, I can support MY conclusions, all the way up to going through the field math. What about yours? First, why not tell us how a sphere-in-sphere waveguide relates to beta decay?

Originally posted by wujotvowujotvowujotvo
Sceptics are advised to be conservative when decrying Schumann too much... else you might intrude into and irk biology a bit...

There's a thing called Circadian Rhythms in biology

edit on 24-11-2012 by wujotvowujotvowujotvo because: (no reason given)

Perhaps you can then explain how circadian rhythms relate to the ionosphere-Earth waveguide. I'll wait. (*crickets*)

Originally posted by PrimeLight
So we should all trust in you by what you guage as "woo"?

Well, it would save you a lot of time.

Here's you an easy heuristic in this case - if the article you're reading says it's a sphere-in-sphere waveguide or call it the ionosphere-Earth waveguide, and there's math, then it's likely NOT woo.

If the article says anything at all about 'Gaia', 'harmonics' , 'heartbeats' or 'vibrations', that's woo.

edit to add: by the way, did you ever bother reading the article you linked to? Really reading it, for meaning? That one's NOT woo, although it's a bit light. You'll probably note that it agrees with what I've said.

Originally posted by PrimeLight
If you haven't done so already, then I would recommend research on this earth's Schumann resonance effect on our being which bears a symbiotic relationship between the human bio-electrical structure with our sun's and earth's harmonic field.
www.nasa.gov...

That link doesn't say anything at all about the human bio-electrical structure. I also didn't find any mention of harmonic field. It says SOME of the frequencies end up being resonant, so by implication some don't. Wind instruments work the same way regarding sound waves input at various frequencies, some frequencies produce a resonance and most don't. It's simply a characteristic of the geometry of the wind instrument just as the schumann resonance is a characteristic of the geometry of the Earth and the atmospheric waveguide.

This resonance provides a useful tool to analyze Earth's weather, its electric environment, and to even help determine what types of atoms and molecules exist in Earth's atmosphere

It mentions lightning as a specific cause of the resonance, and of course getting hit by a bolt of lightning can certainly disrupt the human bio-electrical structure. But you don't need to invoke Schumann resonance regarding that relationship. So I don't see any basis in your link for saying Schumann resonance affects humans or "human bio-electrical structure".