Nuclear decay puzzle
Working at a nuclear research centre as I do, I found Justin Mullins’s article on seasonal variations in radioactive decay most intriguing (27 June, p 42).
I remember a previous New 杏吧原创 article (21 October 2006, p 36) reporting that Claus Rolfs and colleagues had shown they could modify the radioactive decay of certain radioisotopes by encasing them in metal and chilling them close to absolute zero. In a letter responding to that article (11 November 2006, p 26), I mentioned work reported in 1994 by Otto Reifenschweiler, who found that the radioactive decay of tritium absorbed in titanium particles could be reduced by 40 per cent at temperatures between 115 掳C and 275 掳C ().
The most dramatic change in radioactive decay has, however, recently been observed by Fabio Cardone and others on the decay of thorium-228 by using ultrasonic cavitation in water (). In this case, the radioactive decay rate was increased by a whopping factor of 10,000.
It is difficult to believe that all these observations are due to instrumental or systematic errors. The time is ripe to investigate these effects in depth.
Radioactive decay constants seem not to be constant at all. Perhaps that’s not so surprising, since radioactive decay is a result of random particle interactions between the surrounding vacuum and the nucleus. Changing the vacuum state will inevitably change the radioactive decay.
The reported annual variation in nuclear decay rates of silicon-32 peak in February and are lowest in August, as Mullins’s article states.
In the same article, researchers Ephraim Fischbach and Jere Jenkins note that this seasonal variation seems to track precisely the 3 per cent change in the Earth’s distance from the sun over the year due to its elliptical orbit. This suggested to them that an increase in the number of interactions between radioactive particles and neutrinos emitted by the sun will increase decay rates as the Earth draws closer to its star.
However, the Earth is closest to the sun at the beginning of January rather than February so the match does not seem to be precise.
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK
Ephraim Fischbach writes:
鈥� Indeed, this “phase shift” of a month is now the object of intense study by our group and others, as we suspect that it may hold a clue to the underlying mechanism for the annual oscillations. We have some ideas, but no definite answers, so we would be delighted to receive suggestions from Mr Idle or any other of your readers.
What war is good for
John Horgan argues that war is not an innate part of human nature, and discusses the possibility that the human race is heading towards a more peaceful way of living (4 July, p 38). However, he does not consider the function of war in society. It is not enough to look at the cost of war, there must be some benefit as, from an evolutionary perspective, behaviours with no benefits will die out.
War stimulates technological change and dissemination. War-related injuries begin to appear in the archaeological record with the advent of the agricultural era, about 10 millennia ago. This warfare aided the enormous acceleration of technological development that has taken place since then. Metalworking, the chariot, catapults, projectile weapons, explosive devices: all were developed and adopted by societies needing to remain competitive. More recent examples of accelerated technological change include warplanes, submarines, atomic energy, stealth technology, satellites and rockets.
The impact of war produces enormous benefits in these terms as well as the obvious tremendous costs. Ignoring the benefits oversimplifies the role of war in society.
Uncritical sceptics
Richard Wiseman reported a negative result from his Twitter experiment on remote vision (13 June, p 23). The experiment involved Wiseman going to a location and asking participants to choose one of five photos that matched their intuition of his surroundings. This leaves much room for uncontrolled variables, such as the choice of the photographed locations, to affect the experiment.
The experiment is an example of a much larger issue. All too often scientific Sceptics like Wiseman reserve their scepticism for ideas that challenge the establishment, and forget to apply the same critical standard to the lazy group-think that can be found in mainstream research. This is nowhere more true than in the field of parapsychology.
Some researchers in extrasensory perception are meticulous about accounting for all possible sources of bias: Robert Jahn of Princeton University and Jessica Utts of the University of California, Irvine, come to mind. But I can’t think of a single Sceptic who has been so careful or so thorough in their own analysis.
Set inventions free
In your interview with James Dyson he argues that without the protection afforded by patents inventors would not invent (11 July, p 20).
However, the evidence suggests that patents can instead block invention. The Wright brothers, who were made so much of in the Dyson interview, in their , stifled competition, and hence progress, in the US aviation industry. It was fortunate that their patent was not valid in Europe, where innovation continued unimpeded.
Similar effects were seen in the automotive industry, which only took off after the patent on the Otto cycle for the four-stroke engine had expired. And where would the internet be if the fundamental protocols and the World Wide Web had been patented? Still locked into the walled gardens of the proprietary, and expensive, online services that existed before, paying by the hour to get online.
By his own admission, Dyson is developing a version of the robotic vacuum idea, yet he sued Hoover to prevent it copying him.
Converging cultures
In common with other observers, most of your correspondents seem to agree that C. P. Snow’s “two cultures” gap is now wider than ever (2 May, p 26, and subsequent letters 30 May, p 20, 20 June, p 25 and 27 June, p 27). Yet there are recent signs of convergence, notably in cognitive science and neuropsychology. Johan Bollen and colleagues processed data based on a billion online user interactions with scholarly web portals in 2006, and showed that the humanities and social sciences act as interdisciplinary bridges with the physical sciences ().
Ideas come round
Mark Brandon writes that there is no evidence people ever believed the Earth is flat (27 June, p 27).
In fact, Christians believed it for centuries. The book of Genesis states that God created the sky in the form of an inverted bowl holding a mass of water above the flat Earth. 杏吧原创s already knew that the Earth is roughly spherical, but many early Christians felt compelled to believe Holy Writ without question.
In the 1st century, Claudius Ptolomaeus, director of the museum at Alexandria, compiled an encyclopedia of astronomical and geographical data and calculations, but later evidence of Earth maps in illuminated books, and the famous Mappa Mundi in Hereford cathedral in the English midlands, shows the Earth was believed to be flat.
In the 7th century, the papal missionary Boniface wrote to the pope accusing the Bishop of Salzburg, an Irishman known as Ferghil the Geometer, of heresy. From the pope’s response it seems probable that his heresy consisted of believing in the existence of the Antipodes.
The Ptolemaic cosmogony came back to Europe in the 13th century, in the form of the Almageste, a translation of Ptolemy’s great work into Arabic and thence into Latin. It was from the Almageste that Chaucer and Christopher Columbus learned the theory of the round Earth, while many creationists, including Martin Luther, continued to insist that the Earth was flat.
Nuclear washout
You report that sea-level rises of up to 5 metres are possible within 300 years (4 July, p 28). This timescale is well within the half-lives of many of the elements in radioactive waste, yet all the locations for nuclear new-builds that I have seen mooted are in low-lying coastal locations, and all would be threatened or inundated by a 5-metre rise. We should ensure that any nuclear new-build and waste storage facilities are located at least 80 metres above current sea level.
Stimulated discourse
When discussing the female prostate, Elaine Morgan draws a comparison between it and human male nipples, which she describes as “functionless” analogues of the female version (4 July, p 24). This fails to take male sexual function into account.
Male nipples do not have the child-rearing function of female nipples, but to brand them as functionless because of that means that we should regard post-menopausal sexual relationships and homosexual relationships as functionless. In humans, sex isn’t just about reproduction and in both sexes the nipples are an erogenous zone. Their stimulation can play a significant role in sex, so you can hardly call them “functionless”.
Dino anatomy
I was amused by Feedback’s theory, prompted by cinematic depictions of tackle-free dinosaurs, that their extinction resulted from a physical inability to procreate (20 June).
I’m no expert, but modern reptiles generally seem to keep their genitalia and cloacal opening tucked well out of harm’s way 鈥� think of the complications for snakes if they didn’t. I don’t see why dinosaurs would have been any different.
If the dinosaur in question lacked even a cloaca, I would have thought that the more pressing problems associated with excretion would have finished the poor thing off well before reproduction came into play.
For the record
鈥� In a lead-acid battery, it is the sulphate ions that are transferred between the electrolyte and the electrodes, not the lead as we said (18 July, p 42)