2012/05/01 by P. A. Sturrock, Peter A. Sturrock, P.A. Sturrock +10 · 3 citations
Health Professions · Physics and Astronomy · #Nuclear Physics and Applications #Radioactive Decay and Measurement Techniques #Radioactivity and Radon Measurements #astro-ph.SR #nucl-ex
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2012.04.009
9 pages, 21 figures
arxiv created 2012/05/01 · openalex publication_date 2012/05/08 · crossref created 2012/05/08 · crossref issued 2012/08/01 · crossref published 2012/08/01 · crossref published-print 2012/08/01 · arxiv updated 2015/06/05 · crossref deposited 2018/11/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This article presents an analysis of about 29,000 measurements of gamma radiation associated with the decay of radon in a sealed container at the Geological Survey of Israel (GSI) Laboratory in Jerusalem between 28 January 2007 and 10 May 2010. These measurements exhibit strong variations in time of year and time of day, which may be due in part to environmental influences. However, time-series analysis reveals a number of periodicities, including two at approximately 11.2 year-1 and 12.5 year-1. We have previously found these oscillations in nuclear-decay data acquired at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), and we have suggested that these oscillations are attributable to some form of solar radiation that has its origin in the deep solar interior. A curious property of the GSI data is that the annual oscillation is much stronger in daytime data than in nighttime data, but the opposite is true for all other oscillations. This may be a systematic effect but, if it is not, this property should help narrow the theoretical options for the mechanism responsible for decay-rate variability.