Radioactive Half-Lives Not Affected by Earth/Sun Distance

The international symbol for radiation, which is also known as the trefoil.
The international symbol for radiation, which is also known as the trefoil.
Several years ago, data came out of Purdue University, indicating that the half-lives of some radioactive substances are affected by the distance between the earth and the sun. Despite the fact that most scientists thought there were problems with the experiment, the group continued to publish pretty convincing data supporting their case. Based on their data, I thought their conclusion was well-founded. However, it looks like they (and I) were wrong.

I first noted that there might be a problem with their conclusion over two years ago, when other researchers tried to duplicate their results using a more precise technique. They found small changes (significantly smaller than the Purdue group) and no indication that those changes were correlated with the distance between the earth and the sun. Since then, two more papers have been published that pretty much seal the case that the Purdue results were wrong.

The first paper comes from NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Since NIST is responsible for all sorts of standards, several of their groups monitor radioactive isotopes for extended periods of time. They are also concerned with precision, so their procedures are focused on making sure there are no outside influences acting on their experiments.

Their paper reports on the results of experiments carried out in 14 laboratories across the world. A total of 24 different radioactive isotopes were studied, including those that decay by alpha emission, beta emission, electron capture, and positron emission. Some experiments covered “only” 200 days, but others covered four decades! Eleven different experimental techniques were used. All of the experiments saw very small variations (less than one-hundredth of one percent), and none of them saw any correlation between those tiny variations and the distance between the earth and the sun. In addition, the variations were different from experiment to experiment, so the most likely explanation for them is variation in the instruments that were used.

While the NIST paper obviously makes a strong case that the Purdue results are not real, I think a more recent paper gives us the final word. The authors used the same detection technique as the Purdue researchers, but they performed the experiment in a sealed chamber that had constant pressure, humidity, and temperature. They studied five radioactive isotopes for over a year, and like the NIST teams, they saw only small variations that were not correlated with the distance between the earth and the sun. This indicates that whatever the Purdue researchers saw was related to changing weather conditions, not changing radioactive half-lives.

While it would have been exciting for radioactive half-lives to be dependent on the distance between the earth and the sun, it almost certainly isn’t the case.

18 thoughts on “Radioactive Half-Lives Not Affected by Earth/Sun Distance”

  1. Dr. Wile,

    You are one of the only bloggers that I can rely on to not spin or ignore results. Thank you for your humility and desire for honest understanding.

    I was curious about this remark: “This indicates that whatever the Purdue researchers saw was related to changing weather conditions, not changing radioactive half-lives.” Would the atmospheric conditions in this case be affecting the instruments, causing inconsistent results? If that is the case, it should be demanded that all dating isotope measurements take place on equipment in stable conditions.

    1. The detectors used in the Purdue experiment were filled with a gas, and they detect the presence of radioactivity by detecting ionization in that gas. The temperature will affect the pressure of the gas, and the humidity will affect how easily the gas is ionized. The exterior pressure can also have an effect at the “window” where particles enter. So yes, atmospheric conditions can play a role.

      Now, the level of these effects (even in the Purdue experiments) is relatively small, so when the precision doesn’t have to be extremely high (and it doesn’t for many experiments), the atmospheric effects aren’t worth controlling for. The Purdue team thought they had controlled for them by exposing the detectors to a constant level of radiation periodically and seeing that their response stayed the same. Obviously, they didn’t do that as well as they needed to.

      When it comes to dating, any effects like these should average out, because the time spans are very long. Even if the Purdue team was right, the variation they saw averages out over the course of a year. Thus, these kinds of effects aren’t important in radioactive dating.

  2. Jay, what is the radioactive element that was used and was it the same as the previous experiement? What about the report claiming that a solar storm in 2008 was preceded by a spike in manganese-54 decay rates? Is there still perhaps some kind of solar connection regarding SOME radioactive materials but not others?

    1. The studies that found no solar influence studied all the isotopes that the Purdue group studied, and several others. The 2008 report about the solar flare was done by the Purdue group. Some of the NIST experiments were going on in 2008, and they saw nothing. Obviously, one can’t rule out some effect in some situations, but the entire issue started with the Purdue experiments, and right now, it seems that they were not adequately controlled.

  3. Good to know. What of cavitation and lightning? The last thing I saw about that was an experiment by F. Cardone et. al many years ago.

  4. This probably doesn’t do anything to the idea that dark matter could accelerate radioactive decay, as the absence of seasonal variation in decay rates doesn’t imply an absence of seasonal variation in dark matter detection rates. That particular seasonal variation could be incredibly small, as it would come from the difference in our velocity relative to the dark matter flow as the earth goes around the sun. All it says is that the difference in apparent dark matter density due to the change in earth’s velocity is too small to observably affect decay rates. Changing decay rates appreciably would require hitting a region of space with a much greater dark matter density.

  6. How do we address claims by Christians like Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, who absolutely believe in biological evolution instead of creation because, according to them, what we see in the DNA across different living forms only makes sense in terms of evolution?

        1. If you read Harnett’s book, you will find that CLAVDIVS’s astronomical arguments simply are not consistent with what we know. He is assuming that time behaves the same throughout the universe, and we know that isn’t true. The GPS satellites confirm that quite clearly. When it comes to #71, in #1, he quotes Dr. Chaffin WAY out of context. You can read his actual discussion, in which he promotes the YEC view of accelerated radioactive decay, here. It is widely understood that the Oklo reactor has not operated continuously. In that situation, successful fission reactions depend on many local factors, such as the amount of water in the rock. So he is not saying that the Oklo reactor indicates that half-lives couldn’t change by an order of magnitude or more. He is saying that they couldn’t have changed by that much IF the local conditions stayed reasonably constant and SINCE the reaction started. As Dr. Chaffin continues in the same article:

          Half-life differences of more than one order of magnitude would seem to be ruled out, unless two or more factors may have changed concurrently, with each effect canceling the other. Since the Oklo rocks are interpreted as Precambrian this brings up the question of when the reactions may have occurred. They could have occurred long after the deposition had occurred, but since the deposits are sedimentary it seems unlikely that they could have been from early in Creation week.

          It is unfortunate that the CLAVDIVS is forced to mischaracterize Dr. Chaffin’s views in order to cling to his misconceptions.

          #2 and #4 make the same mistake his other comments make – assuming that time behaves the same everywhere in the universe. #5 is simply false. Radiometric dates rarely line up with other known dates, and different radiometric methods give different dates for the same sample. Here is an article that discusses a couple such examples. Also, I have pointed out the vast discrepancy between radiocarbon dates of dinosaur bones and the radiometric dates of the rocks they are found in. The same is true for fossilized wood and the rocks it is found in.

          #3 is a real issue, but you can’t ignore all the evidence for YEC just because there are some problems with it. In my opinion, belief in an ancient earth has a LOT more problems associated with it.

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