Neutron Lifetime
Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 12:32 pm
KVK Nehru calculates the neutron lifetime in his paper "The Lifetime of the Neutron" http://reciprocalsystem.org/PDFa/The%20 ... Nehru).pdf
His calculated value is = 1011.54 seconds.
The neutron lifetime is an interesting topic right now within the nuclear physics community because they cannot seem to agree on a value: https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... w-physics/
The discrepancy comes from the two methods utilized: one creates neutrons via a beam reaction and measures a portion of these created neutrons. This method finds an average of 887.7 +/- 2.9 s. The other method is the bottle technique, where cold neutrons are essentially "bottled up" in some container and counted, then counted again after some time elapsed. One such experiment (http://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10 ... .78.035505) measured it to be 878.5 +/- 1 s.
Perhaps this discrepancy is due to the environmental effects (presumably the local magnetic field has the largest effect?) on half life known to occur in RS?
Also the discrepancy between the measured data and Nehru's calculation: is this also due to environmental conditions changing the half life? Is it just a coincidence that if one replaces the value of R = 128*(1 + 1/18) with R = 128(1 + 2/9) when performing the calculation that the lifetime becomes much closer to the measured value? ( = 873.60 s). Nehru's justification for using this reduced constant R is because the proton is only a single rotating system, rather than a double rotating system, like atoms.
I also notice that in Nehru's paper there is no mention of the decay in question being to a charged proton. I notice that Larson in Nothing But Motion makes sure to distinguish protons from charged protons. I haven't gotten through his explanation of charge yet so perhaps this will be made clear once I do but I wonder if the compound neutron's observed decay into the charged proton, charged electron, and cosmic neutrino (as opposed to just the proton and cosmic neutrino) would have any effect on the degrees of freedom in consideration to determine the constant R relevant for this calculation.
His calculated value is = 1011.54 seconds.
The neutron lifetime is an interesting topic right now within the nuclear physics community because they cannot seem to agree on a value: https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... w-physics/
The discrepancy comes from the two methods utilized: one creates neutrons via a beam reaction and measures a portion of these created neutrons. This method finds an average of 887.7 +/- 2.9 s. The other method is the bottle technique, where cold neutrons are essentially "bottled up" in some container and counted, then counted again after some time elapsed. One such experiment (http://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10 ... .78.035505) measured it to be 878.5 +/- 1 s.
Perhaps this discrepancy is due to the environmental effects (presumably the local magnetic field has the largest effect?) on half life known to occur in RS?
Also the discrepancy between the measured data and Nehru's calculation: is this also due to environmental conditions changing the half life? Is it just a coincidence that if one replaces the value of R = 128*(1 + 1/18) with R = 128(1 + 2/9) when performing the calculation that the lifetime becomes much closer to the measured value? ( = 873.60 s). Nehru's justification for using this reduced constant R is because the proton is only a single rotating system, rather than a double rotating system, like atoms.
I also notice that in Nehru's paper there is no mention of the decay in question being to a charged proton. I notice that Larson in Nothing But Motion makes sure to distinguish protons from charged protons. I haven't gotten through his explanation of charge yet so perhaps this will be made clear once I do but I wonder if the compound neutron's observed decay into the charged proton, charged electron, and cosmic neutrino (as opposed to just the proton and cosmic neutrino) would have any effect on the degrees of freedom in consideration to determine the constant R relevant for this calculation.