[time-nuts] Variation in Radioactive Decay Rate with Solar Activity

[ed breya]

That was a very interesting article. I'd vote for the neutrinos - 
they must be good for something. Hey, what if neutrinos are actually 
what makes radioactive decay possible, and the randomness of the 
decays is just the randomness of arrival of the right kind of 
neutrino or combinations of them to trigger a particular reaction?

I think a simple way to get a usable signal without adding to the 
home radiation lab may be to look at the shot noise component of the 
MOSFET output signal of a common ionization type smoke detector, 
operated in a sealed chamber to avoid atmospheric effects. The decay 
of the Am-241 generates the average gate current that keeps the alarm 
from going off when unhindered by smoke particles, but maybe there's 
a big enough AC signal available representing individual decay 
events, already sensed and amplified to a decent level by the MOSFET 
circuit - depending on the bandwidth. If the individual events aren't 
discernable, maybe there's some useful information in the current 
envelope, although it would probably be pretty unstable over the 
requisite measuring time frame.

It may be worth taking a look, just to see. Or not.

Ed