Tritium decay experiment one more year data now available

I have two betalights on the bed at the cabin, so we don't whack our heads on the bedposts at night. It gets reageant-grade dark up there. I just bought a new one for fun, and the old ones are maybe half as bright after 5 years. There may be something else going on besides pure half-life decay.

I guess I'll replace both.

On a sunny day (Tue, 16 May 2017 07:04:20 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Extract:

May 2013 light1 888 light2 911 May 2014 light1 829 light2 851 May 2015 light1 773 light2 792 May 2016 light1 718 light2 738 May 2017 light1 669 light2 686

Both lights decrease about the same How does this work out for half-life? These are the bare tubes.

My tritium light in a big block of transparent plastic, hanging in the bathroom, has not decreased noticeable. But a factor .75 is hard to see. I am sure it did get dimmer.

Clean it? Any smokers?

On a sunny day (Tue, 16 May 2017 14:39:55 GMT) it happened Jan Panteltje wrote in :

Correction this is the SAME bare tube. but 2 different photo-cells. Sigh, 5 years... :-) So the sentence should read: Both photocells... Those photocells are not placed at the same spot on the tube not even symmetrically from one end, and maybe have moved once.

But, as I mentioned in just now in sci.physics, one could do a FFT on the data to look for seasonal changes.

Hmm. Cthulu, or varying amounts of neutrinos from the sun?

I vote for Cthulu -- more fun.

A semi-log plot and you should be able to fit a slope. (There's always those dang factors of 2.303.. ln (10)

Here's my plot... (not much of a curve to fit.. almost linear.)

George H.

Why are alien creatures mostly ugly and scary? Why not friendly and cuddly?

Like Tribbles?

On a sunny day (Tue, 16 May 2017 10:07:28 -0500) it happened Tim Wescott wrote in :

Had to google that. Could have been kraken too:

On a sunny day (Tue, 16 May 2017 08:28:03 -0700 (PDT)) it happened George Herold wrote in :

Nice linear plot. Tritium has an official half-life of 12.32 years:

There may also be other factors in play, like the [aging of the ?] fluorescent layer used in those tritium tubes. It does not matter for an FFT to find seasonal differences though.

Once you learn more about current physics, followed a lecture last week on Higgs boson, Higgs field, it seems like most matter with mass (especially top-quark) has a positive charge (one exception, but small). This makes me wonder if negative charge forms a barrier for the Higgs field, say electrons are very light, so a barrier against mass, as Higgs field causes mass.

IF that was so then we could reduce mass (of say a spacecraft) by enveloping it in electrons (or negative charge), but I am way out of my field here. Something for a MV negative charge generator and acceleration experiment. Probably a bogus idea, do not know enough about that stuff ATM.

Or shmoos, or ET.

Shmoos may be the only cartoon character to become an engineering methodology.

It's semi log. I did it with the natural log (Ln) just to check I got the factor of 2.3 in the right place.

Not very much data, in 10 more years the data should be better. (Don't turn it off.)

I know little of particle physics, but the Higgs is mostly just the final missing piece of the "standard model". It doesn't really effect use at the low energies we live at.

Hmm not many Top quarks in the universe. Mostly 'up' and 'down' quarks. (protons). Most of the mass in a proton is "binding energy" and not the mass of the quarks. (This is a bit confusing.. but says the same thing.)

George H.

Well, iirc Cthulhu is supposedly one of the "Old Gods" rather than an alien.

And Alan Dean Foster wrote some fun juvenile SF about the "humanx commonwealth", where humans and a race of bugs (the Thranx) were the greatest of friends and allies.

Lewis's Space Trilogy was the first iirc to break out of the "humans good, aliens bad" paradigm. In his solar system, the Fall had occurred only on Earth--the aliens were unfallen, and so still in their paradisal state.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

What, you haven't seen tribbles?

Still ugly. And probably smelly.

But he DOES believe in universal health care -- because healthy humans are TASTY humans!

On a sunny day (Tue, 16 May 2017 10:01:10 -0700 (PDT)) it happened George Herold wrote in :

Aha, my error missed that.

It is running again, the 1 year alarm woke me up at 4 in the morning, had all the data out and restarted at 9:46 or so, so slight clock shift (was started at 11:00 or there about last year). That is no problem time reset once a year, we are looking for seasons,,, But no sleep is a problem,, But I am used to make insane long hours,

The professor told us that it is the Higgs field that gives the elementary particles mass, Now that sure made me curious.

Yes he did say that. I googled around a bit too after that,

Yea, was there earlier,

You know, I think something very obvious is looking at us, and we simply see the effect but ignore it sort of thing. Would be cool to crack that, It is in the neural net, will see what it comes up with. Experiment! Great!

On a sunny day (Tue, 16 May 2017 09:51:17 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Why does this remind me of the president?

Dunno, I've had my share of "Trouble with Tribbles". I've also had some ETs disappear tools from my bench.

French?