4 ms·
With tritium's short half-life, it seems like it could be ruled out by simply waiting.
by snarfy 6y ago
With tritium's short half-life, it seems like it could be ruled out by simply waiting.
- SaberTail 6y agoTritium is actually being continuously produced by cosmic rays smashing up atoms in the detector. That's why these experiments are buried deep in mines, but even the small amount that get through the earth can cause problems in a sensitive detector. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927650517301895 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09276...
- ISL 6y agoTritium's half-life is 12.5 yr. While I haven't looked up the statistical significance of the 53 excess events, it would take at most six half-lives to hammer that to below one. Sometimes waiting works (in the absence of any cosmogenics or radionuclide support for the background), but a good assay and background model is generally much faster.