FYI A recent peer reviewed paper by H. Jenkins, Daniel W. Mundy, Ephraim Fischbach:
Analysis of environmental influences in nuclear half-life measurements exhibiting time-dependent decay rates Abstract In a recent series of papers evidence has been presented for correlations between solar activity and nuclear decay rates. This includes an apparent correlation between Earth–Sun distance and data taken at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). Although these correlations could arise from a direct interaction between the decaying nuclei and some particles or fields emanating from the Sun, they could also represent an “environmental” effect arising from a seasonal variation of the sensitivities of the BNL and PTB detectors due to changes in temperature, relative humidity, background radiation, etc. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of the responses of the detectors actually used in the BNL and PTB experiments, and show that sensitivities to seasonal variations in the respective detectors are likely too small to produce the observed fluctuations. published in the August 2010 issue of: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment http://tinyurl.com/333aw2h An earlier version of this paper is avaible here for free: http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.5385 Harry
