More news pertaining to our star for this week’s science blog: apparently scientists from Perdue and Stanford have found that the decay of radioactive isotopes fluctuates with the rotation of the sun’s core.

The fluctuations are small (and most likely won’t radically alter any anthropological findings), but they may lend a hand in predicting future solar flares as well as have an impact on medical radiation treatments. The scientists have been collecting data for nearly four years and have determined (at least in the cases of silicon-32 and chlorine-36) that decay rates follow a 33-day pattern.

So how the hell can the sun affect decay rates? The scientists believe it’s due to solar neutrinos, near weightless particles produced by nuclear reactions in the sun’s core. However, these neutrinos have never been known to actually interact with anything before, so one of the scientists summed things up in the rather humorous sentence, “So, what we’re suggesting is that something that can’t interact with anything is changing something that can’t be changed.”

Woo!

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Today’s song: Robot Rock by Daft Punk