The sun influences the rate of radioactive decay. Free Technical Library News

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The sun influences the rate of radioactive decay

11.11.2010

Practically since the discovery of the phenomenon of radioactivity, physicists know for sure that the rate of radioactive decay is constant for each element capable of it and does not change depending on external conditions. However, long-term data collected by American and German physicists cast doubt on this postulate.

According to long-term observations by the Brookhaven National Laboratory (USA) and the Federal Institute of Physics and Technology in Germany, silicon-32 and radium-226 isotopes decay slightly faster in winter than in summer, when the Earth moves away from the Sun in its orbit. And a day and a half before a major flare on the Sun and all the time while it lasted, the decay of manganese-54 slowed down.

In addition, small fluctuations in the rate of isotope decay were found, occurring every 28 days, which is close to the speed of the Sun's rotation around its axis (33 days). All three observations point to some role of the Sun in the process of radioactive decay on Earth.

The authors of the work believe that either solar neutrinos act here - very light elementary particles that almost do not react with matter, or some other particles that are not yet known to us, flying from the star. If the discovery is confirmed, it will at least make it possible to predict solar flares, which is important for astronautics.

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Collective electron tunneling 27.07.2009

In a superconductor, electrons are bound in pairs, and the length of this bond, the so-called coherence length, is several tens of nanometers. An interesting phenomenon is possible with them: quantum phase slip.

Its essence lies in the fact that from the position of quantum mechanics, electrons are to some extent connected in a pair, but to some extent not. Moreover, the ratio of these degrees fluctuates. If suddenly, at some point in time, the electrons turn out to be unbound, a small section of the superconductor will momentarily lose the ability to conduct superconducting current. When the diameter of this superconductor is much smaller than the coherence length, then it will completely lose superconductivity - other pairs will not be able to bypass the suddenly arisen obstacle.

Until now, it was believed that this can only happen with individual electron pairs. However, scientists from the University of Illinois, led by professors Alexei Bezryadin and Paul Golbrath, discovered a similar effect on a macroscopic scale: in a thin superconducting wire, one hundred thousand electron pairs immediately experienced phase slip. In this case, heat was released and the wire, having heated up, ceased to be superconducting.

According to the laws of classical mechanics, such behavior is impossible: all these electrons should not have gone into a new state, since they must first overcome the energy barrier. Obeying the same quantum laws, they managed to tunnel under it, and the whole group at once.

"Our results have confirmed that the laws of quantum mechanics work even for large systems," says Alexey Bezryadin.

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