Is the Sun Emitting a Mystery Particle?

When probing the deepest reaches of the Cosmos or magnifying our understanding of the quantum world, a whole host of mysteries present themselves. This is to be expected when pushing our knowledge of the Universe to the limit. But what if a well-known -- and apparently constant -- characteristic of matter starts behaving mysteriously?
This is exactly what has been noticed in recent years; the decay rates of radioactive elements are changing. This is especially mysterious as we are talking about elements with "constant" decay rates -- these values aren't supposed to change. School textbooks teach us this from an early age.This is the conclusion that researchers from Stanford and Purdue University have arrived at , but the only explanation they have is even weirder than the phenomenon itself: The sun might be emitting a previously unknown particle that is meddling with the decay rates of matter. Or, at the very least, we are seeing some new physics.
Many fields of science depend on measuring constant decay rates. For example, to accurately date ancient artifacts, archaeologists measure the quantity of carbon-14 found inside organic samples at dig sites. This is a technique known as carbon dating.Carbon-14 has a very defined half-life of 5730 years; i.e. it takes 5,730 years for half of a sample of carbon-14 to radioactively decay into stable nitrogen-14. Through spectroscopic analysis of the ancient organic sample, by finding out what proportion of carbon-14 remains, we can accurately calculate how old it is.But as you can see, carbon dating makes one huge assumption: radioactive decay rates remain constant and always have been constant. If this new finding is proven to be correct, even if the impact is small, it will throw the science community into a spin.
Interestingly, researchers at Purdue first noticed something awry when they were using radioactive samples for random number generation. Each decay event occurs randomly (hence the white noise you'd hear from a Geiger counter), so radioactive samples provide a non-biased random number generator.However, when they compared their measurements with other scientists' work, the values of the published decay rates were not the same. In fact, after further research they found that not only were they not constant, but they'd vary with the seasons. Decay rates would slightly decrease during the summer and increase during the winter.
Experimental error and environmental conditions have all been ruled out -- the decay rates are changing throughout the year in a predictable pattern. And there seems to be only one answer.
As the Earth is closer to the sun during the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere (our planet's orbit is slightly eccentric, or elongated), could the sun be influencing decay rates? In another moment of weirdness, Purdue nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins noticed an inexplicable drop in the decay rate of manganese-54 when he was testing it one night in 2006. It so happened that this drop occurred just over a day before a large flare erupted on the sun.
Did the sun somehow communicate with the manganese-54 sample? If it did, something from the sun would have had to travel through the Earth (as the sample was on the far side of our planet from the sun at the time) unhindered.The sun link was made even stronger when Peter Sturrock, Stanford professor emeritus of applied physics, suggested that the Purdue scientists look for other recurring patterns in decay rates. As an expert of the inner workings of the sun, Sturrock had a hunch that solar neutrinos might hold the key to this mystery.
Sure enough, the researchers noticed the decay rates vary repeatedly every 33 days -- a period of time that matches the rotational period of the core of the sun. The solar core is the source of solar neutrinos.It may all sound rather circumstantial, but these threads of evidence appear to lead to a common source of the radioactive decay rate variation. But there's a huge problem with speculation that solar neutrinos could impact decay rates on Earth: neutrinos aren't supposed to work like that.
Neutrinos, born from the nuclear processes in the core of the sun, are ghostly particles. They can literally pass through the Earth unhindered as they so weakly interact. How could such a quantum welterweight have any measurable impact on radioactive samples in the lab?

In short, nobody knows.

If neutrinos are the culprits, it means we are falling terribly short of understanding the true nature of these subatomic particles. But if (and this is a big if) neutrinos aren't to blame, is the sun generating an as-yet-to-be- discovered particle?
If either case is true, we'll have to go back and re-write those textbooks.

Courtesy - Stanford University

Have you seen today’s Space Weather?

EVER think to check the space weather forecast? Power suppliers and the operators of oil pipelines and railroads might want to start. Although it would take a truly massive space storm to truly massive space storm to cause a catastrophe. it is becoming clear that even modest solar activity poses a threat in our technology-dependent world. It makes railway signals go haywire and rusts oil pipelines to the point that they may leak, not to mention wearing down key components in power grids, which could drive up the cost of electricity.
If our planet happens to be in the line of fire when the sun belches out clouds of plasma, these coronal mass ejections (CMEs), can greatly disturb Earth's magnetic field. Such magnetic disturbances in turn can generate currents in power transmission lines, which act like giant antennas to pick up the disturbances.
A huge solar burst similar in strength to one observed in 1859, the biggest on record - could wreck the world economy. Big storms that occur about once per decade can also create chaos, like one that caused a 9-hour blackout in Quebec, Canada, in 1989.
Relatively minor space storms now appear to be behind a range of mysterious mishaps - railway signals malfunctioning in Archangel province in north-western Russia, for example, between 2000 and 2005. A study led by Eugenia Eroshenko of the Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magneyism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation in Troitsk, Russia, examined episodes when signals turned red for minutes or even hours though the track ahead was clear, then spontaneously reverted to green.
Eroshenko's team found that 16 malfunctions of this sort observed between 2000 and 2005 coincided with space storms. "We were surprised by such a clear correlation," Eroshenko says.
How could space weather switch railroad signals from green to red? CMEs appear to interfere with circuits used to sense whether a segment of track is occupied. A power source connected to the two rails normally maintains a voltage between them while they are unoccupied. When a train is present, it eliminates the potential energy difference between the rails by allowing electricity to flow from one to the other. Space storms may have the same effect on the rails as a train, generating unwanted electric currents that could cause the voltage between the two rails to drop and the signal to turn red.
Team member Risto Pirjola of the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki thinks that if other countries start examining the timing of unexplained signal problems, they may turn up a similar link to space weather. The evidence of a link to space storms is "very convincing", says Rod Perala of Electro Magnetic Applications, a consultancy in Lakewood, Colorado, that studies the effects of space weather. It would be wise for railways in other countries to check their equipment for vulnerability to space weather, too, he says.
It should be possible to modify railways to prevent these problems. Some sections seem immune to space weather, perhaps because of minor differences in electrical hardware, and the parts used in the problem-prone areas could be changed, Eroshenko says, but funds have been lacking.
Space weather may also make oil and gas pipelines more prone to rusting - a particular concern because rusty pipelines sometimes spring leaks, creating costly and environmentally damaging spills.
The chemical reactions that cause rust require electrons to flow from the pipe into the surrounding soil, so one way to keep corrosion at bay is to create a potential energy barrier that impedes this flow of electrons, using a power source attached to the pipe. Space storms, however, generate currents in pipes that can overwhelm this barrier, allowing corrosion to proceed.
Richard Marshall of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology 's space weather unit found that space storms disrupted voltages in pipelines in northern Australia, which is just 20 degrees from the equator
"Geomagnetic effects are becoming an issue that must be considered for pipelines at all latitudes," says Boteler.Subtle effects of run-of-the-mill space storms may also wear down key components in electric power grids, making them liable to early failure.More recently, there are signs that transformers can be destroyed by smaller currents over a period of hours or more. A long-lasting 2003 space storm delivered only relatively low-intensity currents to the South African power grid, but damaged several transformers anyway, notes US-based storm analysis consultant John Kappenman.

Iron line in the sun’s corona

Another piece of puzzle of solar corona has been found by observing the sun’s outer atmosphere during eclipses. Ground-based observations reveal the first images of the solar corona in the near-infrared emission line of highly ionized iron, or Fe XI 789.2 nm. The observations were taken during total solar eclipses in 2006, 2008, and 2009 by astrophysicist Adrian Daw of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with an international team of scientists. “The first image of the corona in Fe XI 789.2 nm was taken during the total solar eclipse of March 29, 2006,” said Daw.
The images revealed some surprises, according to a NASA release. Most notably, that the emission extends out at least three solar radii—that’s one-and-a-half times the sun’s width at its equator, or middle—above the surface of the sun, and that there are localized regions of enhanced density for these iron ions.
Combined with observations of other iron charge states, the observations yield the two-dimensional distribution of electron temperature and charge-state measurements for the first time, and establish the first direct link between the distribution of charge states in the corona and in interplanetary space.
“These are the first such maps of the 2-D distribution of coronal electron temperature and ion charge state,” said Daw. Mapping the distribution of electron temperature and iron charge states in the corona with total solar eclipse observations represents an important step in understanding the solar corona and how space weather impacts Earth.