decay
this is probably old news. but it's the kind of old news that becomes new news over and over again. we estimate the age of dead things by the ratios of certain radioisotopes. this technique suggests the earth is billions of years old. not thousands as estimated by people who limit the input of their "knowledge" to a single source. ergo the technique must be wrong. so it comes under scrutiny. one assumption is that the decay rate is constant throughout all of time and space. evidence collected from super novas which are far away and happened long ago suggest that it is indeed, constant. every once in a while someone comes up with data that is unusual. like that decay rate varies with the season. presumably this is because the earth moves closer and farther from the sun during the year. so maybe something from the sun triggers radioactive decay. this something would have to follow an inverse square law. so a 1% change here would imply an absolutely HUGE change in decay rate on say, a space probe which is very far from the sun. they get their power from radioactive decay. but nasa data shows there's no change in their available power. ergo it's much more likely the something that's unusual is the study and not the decay rate.