Fluctuations in measured radioactive decay rates inside a modified Faraday cage: Correlations with space weather

[EN] For several years, reports have been published about fluctuations in measured radioactive decay time-series and in some instances linked to astrophysical as well as classical environmental influences. Anomalous behaviors of radioactive decay measurement and measurement of capacitance inside and outside a modified Faraday cage were documented by our group in previous work. In the present report, we present an in-depth analysis of our measurement with regard to possible correlations with space weather, i.e. the geomagnetic activity (GMA) and cosmic-ray activity (CRA). Our analysis revealed that the decay and capacitance time-series are statistically significantly correlated with GMA and CRA when specific conditions are met. The conditions are explained in detail and an outlook is given on how to further investigate this important finding. Our discovery is relevant for all researchers investigating radioactive decay measurements since they point out that the space weather condition during the measurement is relevant for partially explaining the observed variability.This work has been partially financed by: grant no. 20170764 (Equipos de deteccion, regulacion e informacion en el sector de los sistemas inteligentes de transporte (ITS). Nuevos modelos y ensayos de compatibilidad y verificacion de funcionamiento) (Spain), by grant no. RTI2018-102256-B-I00 (Spain), by the Generalitat Valenciana (Spain) under project Bioingenieria de las Radiaciones Ionizantes. Biorad (PROMETEO/2018/035) and the project MEMO RADION (IDIFEDER/2018/038) co-financed by the Programa Operativo del Fondo Social Europeo 2014-2020", and by grant No.075-00845-20-01 (Russia).Milián-Sánchez, V.; Scholkmann, F.; Fernández De Córdoba, P.; Mocholí Salcedo, A.; Mocholí-Belenguer, F.; Iglesias-Martínez, ME.; Castro-Palacio, JC.... (2020). 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