Effect of qi on the half-life of radioactive isotope Am-241

As a fundamental fact of nuclear physics, the half-life of any radioactive isotope cannot be affected by any physical factors in general. Thus it is very interesting to observe whether it can be affected by Qi or not.

In the previous experiment (1), an alpha radioactive source Am-241 (half-life 458 years) of strength 2 mu C was used as the test sample. Am-241 emits an alpha particle and transforms to Np*-237, the latter emits a gamma photon in 6*10-8 seconds. Photons of energy 59.6 keV are detected by a high purity germanium detector then registered by an on-line 8000 channel buffer. This spectrometer system is very stable.

Under action of Qi emitted by the famous Qigong master, Dr. Yan Xin, the counting rate measured apparently deviates from its normal value. The deviation is at least 7 times of the total experimental error and is of high confidence.

There are two possible explanations. The half-life of Am-241 is changed or the radioactive nuclei are polarized by Qi and the gamma rays emitted exhibit an angular distribution different from the original isotropic distribution.

A new experiment is designed to measure the alpha particles instead of gamma rays. As the alpha emission is independent of polarization of nucleus, we can get an unique explanation about the change of counting rate.

The alpha particles are recorded by 10 sheets of solid state nuclear track detector, CR39, formed a cubic box of dimension 1.5x1.5x1.5 cm3. An Am-241 source of strength 0.02 mu C is used as the test sample. After 70 minutes of Qi treatment by Dr. Yan Xin, the source is placed to the center of the CR39 box. The whole set is put into a jar and vacuumed. The alpha illumination on CR39 in vacuum lasts 1280 seconds. After illumination, the CR39 sheets are etched in 6.25 N NaOH solution at 70 degrees C for 5 hours. A Leitz MPV_PLUS multifunction image analyzer is used for alpha track counting.

The result is, before Qi treatment, 113834 alpha tracks are counted in an area 182.25 mm2, while 124671 tracks are counted after Qi treatment. It means the half-life of Am-241 is shortened by 9.5% after the Qi treatment! The total experimental error is only 0.41%. The result is of very high confidence.

Reference: (1) Yan Xin, Lu Zuyin, Chang Tianbao, Wang Haidong, Zhu Runsheng Nature Journal ( in Chinese) 11, 809, 1988.