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Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 4/11/2011
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Location: New England
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I asked Jim on Twitter, but you guys are wicked smart and could help a brother out. Strange Emissions by Sun are Slowly Mutating MatterWhat are Neutrinos? From what I understand, they are particles that can't really be detected by us, but they effect stuff around us. Is this the Higgs Boson thingey? And I don't understand what they mean by the sun is effecting time and increasing radioactive decay. If this were true, couldn't we actually witness it? I'm looking forward to see what you guys have to say.
"The only true wisdom exists in knowing that you know nothing." - The Mighty Socrates (Not the fake Socrates Plato wrote about in "The Republic.")
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Neutrinos are elementary particles that are hard to detect because they're electrically neutral and can pass through matter. Not easy to set a trap for that. They also travel at near the speed of light.
I read this article--and came away thinking this was a lot of noise about little. I may have misread. But we're probably being bombarded by cosmic rays and neutrinos on such a regular basis that the effect on matter here is negligible. I will probably write this and walk to get some coffee and then be zapped by a matter-eating neutrino, but that's my story now.
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 10/3/2009
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Location: Canada
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You both are right on, terrorgoat and ebb101. The linked article is sensationalist for no real reason, other than attracting uncritical readers. All the dire warnings are just so much show biz, which seems to have taken on a lively role in BIG SCIENCE today.
Here's a quote from the people most recently investigating this possible effect: "So, what we're suggesting is that something that can't interact with anything is changing something that can't be changed." If you do a Google search for "sun, radioactive decay rates," you'll find all kinds of background on the topic.
Neutrinos may have nothing to do with the possible effect. They just often serve as a ready "answer" when nothing else comes to mind, it would seem. If the (very slight) effect holds up under closer scrutiny, some incredibly important physics is nevertheless at play here, whether neutrinos have anything to do with it or not.
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Agree with all that has been said. Neutrinos have been known about for many years, but because they don't interact regularly with matter, we don't know much about what they do. There have been experiments in the past with huge vats of chemicals stored underground specifically for the purpose of detecting neutrinos. In any case, the article has no references to anything credible, nor is there any reason given to link neutrinos to this supposed effect. Maybe we can find some better sources of information about changing rates of radioactive decay. One thing that is interesting is that if radioactive decay rates are not constant, carbon dating would be unreliable, which might completely change out view of history and timelines of extinct species.
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