An innate concept of "everything"

[leskey]

Rather than post tidbits all over the forum, items of interest particularly those changing the previous paradigms of scienc, will be placed in this thread.

Science gets weirder...and less certain, with each passing day:

http://io9.com/#!5619954/the-sun-is-...s-of-chemistry

It's one of the most basic concepts in all of chemistry: Radioactive elements decay at a constant rate. If that weren't the case, carbon-14 dating wouldn't tell us anything reliable about the age of archaeological materials, and every chemotherapy treatment would be a gamble. It's such a fundamental assumption that scientists don't even bother testing it anymore. That's why researchers had to stumble upon this discovery in the most unlikely of ways.

A team at Purdue University needed to generate a string of random numbers, a surprisingly tricky task that is complicated by the fact that whatever method you use to generate the numbers will have some influence on them. Physics professor Ephraim Fischbach decided to use the decay of radioactive isotopes as a source of randomness. Although the overall decay is a known constant, the individual atoms would decay in unpredictable ways, providing a random pattern.

That's when they discovered something strange. The data produced gave random numbers for the individual atoms, yes, but the overall decay wasn't constant, flying in the face of the accepted rules of chemistry. Intrigued, they checked out long range observations of silicon-32 and radium-226 decay, both of which showed a slight but definite variation over time. Intriguingly, the decay seemed to vary with the seasons, with the rate a little faster in the winter and a little slower in the summer...

That's where renowned Stanford physics professor Peter Sturrock entered the picture. Confronted with this mystery, he advised the researchers to test how the decay fluctuations correlated with the Sun's own rotation. They found the decay rates recurred every 33 days, which didn't quite fit with the Sun's known surface rotation length of 28 days. But the neutrinos wouldn't be coming from the surface - they would be coming from deep inside the core. Unlikely as it might seem, the sun's core must be rotating a little slower than its surface, apparently once every 33 days...

As Peter Sturrock explains:

"It's an effect that no one yet understands. Theorists are starting to say, 'What's going on?' But that's what the evidence points to. It's a challenge for the physicists and a challenge for the solar people too. [If it's not neutrinos,] it would have to be something we don't know about, an unknown particle that is also emitted by the sun and has this effect, and that would be even more remarkable."

If these new discoveries hold up, then we've discovered that the sun changes rates radioactive decay, that we can predict solar flares before they happen, that the sun's core rotates slower than its surface, and maybe even that an entirely unknown particle exists and is affecting our world in a tangible way. Not a bad set of results for what was supposed to be a simple search for some random numbers.

If possible at this early stage, this article requires further investigation...

Both carbon-dating and chemotherapy have always been hocus-pocus in the light of innate, 'higher wisdom.'

[leskey]

More articles on this intriguing subject:

http://www.helium.com/items/1936132-...utating-matter

http://news.discovery.com/space/is-t...-particle.html

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-S...s-153704.shtml

[labelwench]

More articles on this intriguing subject:

http://www.helium.com/items/1936132-...utating-matter

http://news.discovery.com/space/is-t...-particle.html

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-S...s-153704.shtml

Very interesting links, Leskey.

Perhaps not having had the opportunity to go to university will yet prove to be an advantage, as when they rewrite the textbooks, I won't have to lose years of redundant information.

That which we do not know (and may not even be aware of) quite likely outnumbers anything we know for a fact in any event, if I were to lay odds on the question.

Life is certainly never boring when it comes to how we perceive the universe.

[leskey]

Very interesting links, Leskey.

Perhaps not having had the opportunity to go to university will yet prove to be an advantage, as when they rewrite the textbooks, I won't have to lose years of redundant information.

That which we do not know (and may not even be aware of) quite likely outnumbers anything we know for a fact in any event, if I were to lay odds on the question.

Life is certainly never boring when it comes to how we perceive the universe.

Thanks for your comments, LW.

As much as it's an anathema to the logicians, the magicians may not come out of the debate too badly scathed at all!

Science is being re-written...in our lifetime.