Evidence of Space Weather in Radon Decay: Unexpected Correlations Between GSI \(^{222}\text {Rn}\) Data and Protons Detected by EPAM

Space weather influence on the decay rate of radon-222 could point to a long-theorized mechanism of exotic particle interactions. This paper presents an analysis of fluctuations in data taken by the Geological Survey of Israel (GSI) [1–5] on the radioactive decay of \(^{222}\text {Rn}\) compared to the changes in detected numbers of protons as seen by the Electron, Proton, and Alpha Monitor (EPAM) detector [6, 7] which is located at the Earth’s L1 position. Surprisingly, the GSI and EPAM detectors show an unexpected correlation between the variations in count rate, well at statistical significance of 5.8 \(\sigma \) , indicating a non-random connection between the data sets. It is surprising that the GSI data (related to the behavior of a nucleus) could be connected to the EPAM data (related to the photons emitted from the Sun) in any way, especially since the two experiments are located approximately one million miles apart and are subject to very different conditions. The statistically significant overlap between data taken by these two detectors is inconsistent with predictions of standard physics. However, they may hint at support for the hypothetical Primakoff mechanism whereby exotic particles, such as galactic dark matter, can couple through magnetic fields to both photons and nuclei [8–20].