rigorousintuition.ca

http://arxivblog.com/?p=596

http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283

""We've long thought that nuclear decay rates are constant regardless of ambient conditions (except in a few special cases where beta decay can be influenced by powerful electric fields). So that makes it hard to explain two puzzling experiments from the 1980s that found periodic variations over many years in the decay rates of silicon-32 and radium-226. Now a new analysis of the raw data says that changes in the decay rate are synchronized with each other and with Earth's distance from the sun. The physicists behind this work offer two theories to explain why this might be happening (abstract). First, some theorists think the sun produces a field that changes the value of the fine structure constant on Earth as its distance from the sun varies. That would certainly affect the rate of nuclear decay. Another idea is that the effect is caused by some kind of interaction with the neutrino flux from the sun's interior which also varies with distance. Take your pick. What makes the whole story even more intriguing is that for years physicists have disagreed over the decay rates of several isotopes such as titanium-44, silicon-32, and cesium-137. Perhaps they took their data at different times of the year?""

This is getting to the core of one of the controversial new theories in cosmology.
The electric universe theory. There was a recent quantum post about gravity being tied to plasma fields and the decay rates would vary as well, according to the electric field; sort of like a potentiometer, or a rheostat. Turn it up and the decay rate is shorter, turn it down and it is longer, (or vice versa).

Just a note: I don't agree with all the points of the theory, but there is evidence that electricity plays a much larger part than traditional physicists give credit.

http://diglib.princeton.edu:8000/EADRBS ... /C0968.jpg

Velikovsky may yet have his day

Aye, Velikovsky! THE first nutter that got me intrigued...
I was visiting Israel, and had as a guide an eccentric jewish guy, who had been doing archeological digs in many ME countries...He told about Velikovskys theories at great lengths..

And Itzhak Bentovs theories...

Body electric...
Eletric universe...
Energy stream information, consciousness matter exchange..
Reflections on a clear pool

Also, Rupert Sheldrake wrote in his book "7 experiments that could change the world" about this very thing - the "constants" that dont seem to be so constant. He used gravitational constant as an example - its measurements have varied both over time and over place. And the variations do not correlate with measurement accuracy, ie. the variations are seen as big even when measurement accuracy goes up - which should decrease variation!

a new update on this...

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2010/08/23/the-strange-case-of-solar-flares-and-radioactive-elements/

I never wound up catching this thread way back when. It just occurred to me though, and it's most assuredly not true, but you know when you visit those ancient sites where people dwelled way back when? I'm thinking Mesa Verde in Colorado or a castle in Europe, even relatively short modern people have to duck to get into their doorways. They chalk it up to, sensibly, nutrition. But what if it was actually a change in the gravitational field of Earth? Like in Robinson's Mars series -- a few generations down the line, the offspring of the original settlers wound up becoming tall and wispy.

Yet! If it was nutrition, why then is the "caveman diet" and other such natural, sustainable and organic ways of feeding ourselves looked at as healthy today, as doubtlessly these people consumed a diet with no artificial, synthetic chemicals and such? What if there was just a slight 3 to 7 percent change in the general gravity of Earth? Could that not also account for the increase in size of modern humans? Could it be antibiotics? Could it be sanitation? Vaccines? Or could it be, of all things, an imperceptible gravitation flux?

Perhaps gravity was even weaker during the "days of the dinosaurs", thus allowing them to grow so big, lessening the stress their mass must have put on their skeletal systems.

I'm not stoned, just speculating as per:

Penguin wrote:Also, Rupert Sheldrake wrote in his book "7 experiments that could change the world" about this very thing - the "constants" that dont seem to be so constant. He used gravitational constant as an example - its measurements have varied both over time and over place. And the variations do not correlate with measurement accuracy, ie. the variations are seen as big even when measurement accuracy goes up - which should decrease variation!

Just a side note: Peter Sturrock, the protagonist of the article justdrew posted, is something of a ufologist.

82_28 wrote:
Perhaps gravity was even weaker during the "days of the dinosaurs", thus allowing them to grow so big, lessening the stress their mass must have put on their skeletal systems.

Puts me in mind of those giant humanoid skeletons they used to find regularly in North America before they became verboten to talk about in other than vaguely legendary Fortean terms.