Nuclear Decay and Distance from Sun
There's a fascinating post up at the physics arXiv blog detailing some research on a variation in the rate of nuclear decay, depending on the distance of the Earth from the Sun when the measurements are taken. Obviously, there are going to be knock-on effects for a lot of science fiction here; you can measure distance from stars by the changes, for one thing, but there's also the problem that your nuclear-powered spacecraft is going to behave rather oddly when the rate of decay changes.
The one thing they don't say is whether it gets slower or faster as distance increases, which is the real meat of the subject!
Posted by Drew Shiel at August 30, 2008 11:13 PM
