The significance of using the Newcomb-Benford law as a test of nuclear half-life calculations

TL;DR

This paper examines whether the Newcomb-Benford law can be used to evaluate nuclear half-life models, concluding that it offers no additional insight into nuclear decay theories.

Contribution

The study analyzes the applicability of the Newcomb-Benford law to nuclear half-life data and demonstrates its limited usefulness in testing decay models.

Findings

Half-life sequences follow the Newcomb-Benford law.

The law does not provide new information about decay processes.

It cannot effectively test nuclear decay theories.

Abstract

Half-life number sequences collected from nuclear data charts are found to obey the Newcomb-Benford law. Based on this fact, it has been suggested recently, that this law should be used to test the quality of nuclear decay models. In this paper we briefly recall how, when and why the Newcomb-Benford law can be observed in a set of numbers with a given probability distribution. We investigate the special case of nuclear half-lives, and show that the law provides no additional clue in understanding decay half-lives. Thus, it can play no significant role in testing nuclear decay theories.