The Sun is changing the rate of radioactive decay, and breaking the rules of chemistry

Alasdair Wilkins
8/23/10 6:10pmFiled to: MAD SCIENCE
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The Sun is changing the supposedly constant rates of decay of radioactive elements, and we have absolutely no idea why. But an entirely unknown particle could be behind it. Plus, this discovery could help us predict deadly solar flares.

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.