.by Jonathan Tennenbaum
(Full text of article from summer 2000 21st Century)
A Simple Experiment
Change in Shape over Time
Postscript
When the ‘Scientific Method’ Obstructs Science
|Russian scientists discover unexpected regularities in radioactive decay, linked to astronomical cycles
Two years ago, nearly unnoticed in the West, the Russian biophysicist S.E. Shnoll published a paper in the prominent Russian physics journal Uspekhi Fisicheskikh Nauk1 summing up the results of more than three decades of investigations of anomalous statistical regularities in a wide range of physical, chemical, and biological processes, from radioactive decay to the rates of biochemical reactions.
The evidence points unambiguously to the existence of a previously unknown relationship between fluctuations in the rates of radioactive and other processes in the laboratory, and major astronomical cycles, including the day, month, and year. The implication is, that many phenomena which until now have been regarded as purely statistical in character—such as the distribution of fluctuations in the momentary rates of radioactivity measured in a sample—are somehow controlled or at least strongly influenced by an astrophysical factor, which varies in time in the same way at all points on the Earth.
Vladimir Voeikov, a colleague of Shnoll, comments in the Spring 2000 issue of 21st Century: “Shnoll’s work shows that time is heterogeneous. It is not a Newtonian time. Each moment in time is different from another, and this can be seen in any physical process that you study.”
Albert Einstein, who rejected claims by Niels Bohr and others that the fundamental microphysical processes are essentially, irreducibly random in character, liked to say that “God does not play dice.” Einstein and others pointed to the arbitrary nature of Bohr’s argument: Just because physicists in Bohr’s time could not penetrate beyond the apparent randomness of radioactive decay and other microscopic processes, to find a deeper lawfulness and regularity underlying such processes, does not mean that science is doomed to remain in that state of ignorance forever!
By demonstrating the existence of a universal, astronomical factor influencing the fine structure of supposedly random fluctuations, Shnoll et al. have opened up an entirely new field of scientific investigation which is not supposed to exist, according to Bohr.
A Simple Experiment
We now give a very brief description of the basic phenomenon discovered by Shnoll and his collaborators. The phenomenon itself is so astonishingly simple, that it is amazing that it has not attracted more attention until now.
The simplest case is the measurement of radioactive decay, where Shnoll has conducted thousands of experiments of the following simple type. We take a radioactive sample, and place it in front of a suitable detector (such as a Geiger counter), which counts the individual acts of radioactive decay of nuclei in the sample by detecting the emitted particles. Assuming the half-life of the radioactive element involved is relatively long, the count-rate of the detector, in counts per second or per minute, will fluctuate around a certain average value, which is related to the number of radioactive atoms in the sample and their half-life.
This phenomenon of continual fluctuations in the number of counts per unit time, around a relatively fixed average value, is normally accounted for by assuming that the radioactive decay of any given atom is a random event, and the assumption that decay of a given atom occurs independently of the other atoms in the sample. Thus, each atom which has not yet decayed up to a certain moment in time, has a certain probability of decaying during the next minute—a probability which is fixed for any given isotope by the character of that isotope, and virtually independent of the temperature, chemical environment, and activity of neighboring atoms.
An extraordinary phenomenon emerges, however, when we examine the fluctuations more carefully, with the help of a histogram: We fix a certain period of time (10 seconds, or a minute for example), and record the number of counts during each of a series of consecutive intervals of the given length. This gives us a sequence of whole numbers. We construct a histogram, by plotting the number of times a given whole number appears in the sequence, as a function of the number.
Now, from the standpoint of simple statistics we would expect the histogram curve to have a simple bell shape, with a maximum around the number corresponding to the overall average number of counts, and then declining gradually on both sides. Naturally, if the number of measurements is small, the histogram will look more irregular, owing to the effect of random fluctuations; but we would expect that as we increase the total time of measurement, the curve would become closer and closer to the ideal mathematical bell curve.
However, real measurements of radioactivity and many other processes, carried out by Shnoll and others over many years, give a completely different result! The histograms typically show several clearly defined peaks, which do not “smooth out” as we increase the number of measurements, but which actually become more and more pronounced!
In four histograms, each plotting the results of 1,200 consecutive measurements of the radioactivity of a sample of the iron isotope Fe-55, over 36-second intervals, the largest peak corresponds to the average count, of about 31,500 pulses per 36 seconds; but there are a number of other peaks, which we can see emerging more and more clearly as we follow the cumulative results of the first 100, 200, 300, and so on, measurements as “layers” under the main curve (Figure 1).
Change in Shape over Time
The histograms, made from more than two days from four successive 12-hour-long series of measurements, show another typical phenomenon discovered by Shnoll: The shapes of the histograms change over time (Figure 2). Most remarkably, the shapes of histograms for independent measurements taken over the same time period, tend to be very similar.
For example, simultaneous measurement of the reaction rate of ascorbic acid, dichlorophenolindophenol (DCPIP), and beta activity of carbon-14 show histograms of very similar shape.
These and a large number of other experiments carried out by Shnoll and his collaborators over many years, point unambiguously to the existence of a universal factor influencing the shapes of histograms, and which varies in time. Furthermore, the Russian researchers have discovered well-defined periods, over which similar histogram shapes tend to recur (Figure 3).
To do this, they devised a computer-based algorithm for measuring the relative degree of “closeness” or similarity of histogram shapes, and on this basis carried out a computer analysis of hundreds of histograms taken over a long period. Examining the distribution of time intervals between “similar” histograms, they found strong peaks at 0 hours (that is, histograms made independently at the same time tend to be similar), at approximately 24 hours, at 27.28 days (probably corresponding to the synodic rotation of the Sun), and at three time intervals close to a year: 364.4, 365.2 and 366.6 days.
More recent data, just reported to the author, indicate that the “24-hour” period is actually slightly shorter, and corresponds quite precisely to a sidereal day! The latter would suggest, that at least one astronomical factor influencing histogram shape may originate outside the solar system, being associated with the orientation of the measuring station relative to the galaxy, and not only relative to the Sun.
Shnoll concludes: “From the data presented above, it follows that the ‘idea of shape’—the fine structure of distributions of results of measurements of processes of diverse nature—is determined by cosmological factors.” He does not put forward a definite hypothesis concerning the nature of the these factors, but suggests as a possibility the notion of a global “change of space-time structure,” and notes that “a sound analysis of such a hypothesis will possibly require experiments under different gravitational conditions.”
Clearly, these results should be intensively followed up by scientists around the world.
Jonathan Tennenbaum, based in Wiesbaden, Germany, is a member of the scientific advisory board of 21st Century Science & Technology magazine. He heads the Fusion Energy Foundation in Europe.
Notes
1. See S.E. Shnoll, V.A. Kolombet, E.V. Pozharskii, T.A. Zenchenko, I.M. Zvereva, and A.A. Konradov, 1998. “Realization of discrete states during fluctuations in macroscopic processes,” in Uspekhi Fisicheskikh Nauk, Vol. 41, No. 10, pp. 1025-1035. A new paper is currently in preparation. Shnoll’s group is based at Moscow State University
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