Experimental Evidence for Variability in Planck’s Constant

Annual variations of 1000 - 3000 ppm (peak-to-valley) have been observed in the decay rates of 8 radionuclides over a 20 year span by six organizations on three continents, including beta decay (weak interaction) and alpha decay (strong interaction). In searching for a common cause, we hypothesized that small variations in Planck’s constant might account for the observed synchronized variations in strong and weak decays. If so, then h would be a maximum around January-February of each year and a minimum around July-August of each year based on the 20 years of radioactive decay data. To test this hypothesis, a purely electromagnetic experiment was set up to search for the same annual variations. From Jun 14, 2011 to Jan 29, 2014 (941 days), annual variations in tunneling voltage through 5 parallel Esaki tunnel diodes were recorded. It found annual variations of 826 ppm peak-to-valley peaking around Jan 1. These variations lend support to the hypothesis that there is a gradient in h of about 21 ppm across the Earth’s orbit.