Power Spectrum Analyses of Nuclear Decay Rates

TL;DR

This study analyzes nuclear decay data from multiple sources, revealing a consistent annual periodicity across different isotopes, but the cause remains uncertain and requires further investigation.

Contribution

It provides a spectral analysis of nuclear decay rates from three different experiments, confirming a common annual frequency and highlighting the need for more controlled studies.

Findings

All data sets show a primary annual frequency.

No correlation found with environmental factors.

Annual periodicity appears to be a real effect.

Abstract

We provide the results from a spectral analysis of nuclear decay data displaying annually varying periodic fluctuations. The analyzed data were obtained from three distinct data sets: 32Si and 36Cl decays reported by an experiment performed at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), 56Mn decay reported by the Children's Nutrition Research Center (CNRC), but also performed at BNL, and 226Ra decay reported by an experiment performed at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Germany. All three data sets exhibit the same primary frequency mode consisting of an annual period. Additional spectral comparisons of the data to local ambient temperature, atmospheric pressure, relative humidity, Earth-Sun distance, and their reciprocals were performed. No common phases were found between the factors investigated and those exhibited by the nuclear decay data. This suggests that either a combination of factors was responsible, or that, if it was a single factor, its effects on the decay rate experiments are not a direct synchronous modulation. We conclude that the annual periodicity in these data sets is a real effect, but that further study involving additional carefully controlled experiments will be needed to establish its origin.