Merged Group measures radioactive decay rates changing with seasons - blames sun

[Dancing David]

So how many databases of radioactive decay of certain elements are there, could the data be used for a large scale study by the authors.

To eliminate confounding factors.

 

[ben m]

So how many databases of radioactive decay of certain elements are there, could the data be used for a large scale study by the authors.

To eliminate confounding factors.

You can't necessarily eliminate this particular confounding factor just by adding more data; as I said, it's entirely normal for detectors to vary their behavior over the course of a year---due to weather, power, cosmic rays, personnel changes, etc.. If you do more data mining I'm sure you will find some data archives show summer rate enhancement, and some show winter rate enhancement, and some show nothing. Which is what we already have.

What you need to do is run a dedicated, super-stabilized detector for a year or two, run by someone experienced in this particular type of stabilization. You'd use both Fischbach's isotopes and something otherwise claimed to be stable (one of Norman's).

 

[Dancing David]

Cool, I was thinking that the more data the smoother it will get and then if there was a consistent signal it would show, but yes more people would mess with it during the week, at almost all places.

So could you set up a remote in a deep mine or something like that? How often do you need to calibrate?

 

[ben m]

Cool, I was thinking that the more data the smoother it will get and then if there was a consistent signal it would show, but yes more people would mess with it during the week, at almost all places.

So could you set up a remote in a deep mine or something like that? How often do you need to calibrate?

A deep mine helps with some things (cosmic rays) but not with others. For one example, many mines run their air circulation differently in summer and winter. (At the Soudan lab this results in 2x as much radon in summer as in winter.) The personnel issues are still there. You're still using some sort of external power. Etc.

My guess would be that, if you're counting a "hot" source---hot enough that cosmic-ray backgrounds aren't an issue at the 0.1% level---you would do better to stay on the surface, but put the detector in a climate-controlled (temperature, humidity) room with no personnel access; power it via a double-conversion UPS that lives inside the room; build any necessary calibrations directly into the apparatus so they run unattended. If cosmic rays are a problem, you'd go underground and take the same precautions there.

What does the calibration schedule need to look like? I don't think there's an off-the-cuff answer to that. I'd think about the various possible forms that a detector drift could take (livetime, pulse shape, threshhold, detector gain, preamp gain, efficiency, continuum background, peaking background, etc.) and devise a calibration scheme that nails down each of them. There's no reason that this calibration can't be totally automated and thus no reason that it can't happen (say) hourly.