Analysis of environmental influences in nuclear half-life measurements exhibiting time-dependent decay rates

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether environmental factors could explain observed seasonal variations in nuclear decay rates, analyzing detector sensitivities and concluding they are unlikely to account for the correlations with solar activity.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of detector responses, ruling out environmental sensitivities as the cause of observed decay rate fluctuations linked to solar activity.

Findings

Detector sensitivities are too small to explain seasonal decay rate variations.

Environmental effects are unlikely to account for the observed correlations.

Supports the possibility of a solar influence on nuclear decay rates.

Abstract

In a recent series of papers evidence has been presented for correlations between solar activity and nuclear decay rates. This includes an apparent correlation between Earth-Sun distance and data taken at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). Although these correlations could arise from a direct interaction between the decaying nuclei and some particles or fields emanating from the Sun, they could also represent an "environmental" effect arising from a seasonal variation of the sensitivities of the BNL and PTB detectors due to changes in temperature, relative humidity, background radiation, etc. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of the responses of the detectors actually used in the BNL and PTB experiments, and show that sensitivities to seasonal variations in the respective detectors are likely too small to produce the observed fluctuations.