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Plutonium found in Pacific
#1

Plutonium found in Pacific
Quote:Traces of rare forms of iron and plutonium have been found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, after some kind of cataclysm in outer space created this radioactive stuff and sent it raining down on our planet.

The extraterrestrial debris arrived on Earth within the last 10 million years, according to a report in the journal Science. Once it hit the Pacific Ocean and settled to the bottom, nearly a mile down, the material got incorporated into layers of a rock that was later hauled up by a Japanese oil exploration company and donated to researchers.

"Just knowing that there's plutonium there is amazing," says Brian Fields, an astronomer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who was not part of the research team. "Now we only have tiny amounts of material — after all, we're talking about hundreds of atoms here. But we should be grateful for that, because they are freshly made from exploding stars."

Freshly made specimens like these could help scientists understand how the universe forged elements heavier than iron, such as gold, platinum, uranium and plutonium. "These are the elements where we are still in a mystery," says Anton Wallner, a physicist with the Australian National University in Canberra who led the international team that did the new work. "We do not know exactly where they are produced and how much is produced in different sites."

Figuring out the source of these elements is a big deal for astronomers, who already pretty much know where the rest of the periodic table comes from. Hydrogen and helium got born in the Big Bang, for example, and elements such as carbon and oxygen form in the cores of stars — that's why beloved astronomer Carl Sagan liked to say, "We are made of star stuff."

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996499035...cean-floor

I just think it's amazing that they can detect just a few hundred atoms of anything at all.
On hiatus.
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#2

Plutonium found in Pacific
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#3

Plutonium found in Pacific
Quote:Traces of rare forms of iron and plutonium have been found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean


Say What?

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Time for Tokyo to go on alert!
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#4

Plutonium found in Pacific
Meh, that's Odo Island, too far from Tokyo for there to be any serious dangers. Your government is on guard and ready to protect you!
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#5

Plutonium found in Pacific
Um, distance didn't save them the first time.
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#6

Plutonium found in Pacific
(05-14-2021, 06:13 PM)Minimalist Wrote: Um, distance didn't save them the first time.
Your government wouldn't lie to you!
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#7

Plutonium found in Pacific
Now there's a thing I always thought Plutonium didn't occur naturally.
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#8

Plutonium found in Pacific
(05-14-2021, 09:38 PM)Inkubus Wrote: Now there's a thing I always thought Plutonium didn't occur naturally.

It has to be created somewhere.
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#9

Plutonium found in Pacific
(05-14-2021, 07:22 PM)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:
(05-14-2021, 06:13 PM)Minimalist Wrote: Um, distance didn't save them the first time.
Your government wouldn't lie to you!

Depends who is running it.
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#10

Plutonium found in Pacific
(05-14-2021, 09:38 PM)Inkubus Wrote: Now there's a thing I always thought Plutonium didn't occur naturally.

That was my first thought as well. But apparently exploding stars can pretty much do what they want.
On hiatus.
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#11

Plutonium found in Pacific
(05-14-2021, 10:50 PM)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:
(05-14-2021, 09:38 PM)Inkubus Wrote: Now there's a thing I always thought Plutonium didn't occur naturally.

That was my first thought as well. But apparently exploding stars can pretty much do what they want.

"We are all star ducks."
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#12

Plutonium found in Pacific
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przybylski%27s_Star
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#13

Plutonium found in Pacific
The presence of the elements higher than iron on the periodic chart probably means that the star accreted from other star's explosions' debris. Of course, the solar system astrophysics class I took in '82 is probably outdated.  girl blushing
If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.
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#14

Plutonium found in Pacific
(05-14-2021, 09:38 PM)Inkubus Wrote: Now there's a thing I always thought Plutonium didn't occur naturally.
It does sort of, actually.  In U-238 deposits, if a uranium atom captures a neutron, it can transform into Pu-239, which has a half life on the order of 24,000 years, so it can in principle build up a little, but it's transient.

What's special about the plutonium-244 is that it has a half life of some 80 million years, and doesn't appear by neutron capture or in a decay chain except by a pretty unwieldy and unlikely set of circumstances -- unlikely enough that the concentrations they found (along with iron-60) are much more likely to have an interstellar origin than a terrestrial one.
"Aliens?  Us?  Is this one of your Earth jokes?"  -- Kro-Bar, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
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#15

Plutonium found in Pacific
(05-14-2021, 10:05 PM)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:
(05-14-2021, 09:38 PM)Inkubus Wrote: Now there's a thing I always thought Plutonium didn't occur naturally.

It has to be created somewhere.

I thought it was one of these: synthetic elements
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#16

Plutonium found in Pacific
(05-14-2021, 11:50 PM)Fireball Wrote: The presence of the elements higher than iron on the periodic chart probably means that the star accreted from other star's explosions' debris. Of course, the solar system astrophysics class I took in '82 is probably outdated.  girl blushing

Did they have stars then?
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#17

Plutonium found in Pacific
Solar System is Traveling through Cloud of Supernova Debris

Quote:“For the last few thousand years, the Solar System has been moving through a denser cloud of gas and dust, known as the Local Interstellar Cloud, whose origins are unclear,” they said.

“If this cloud had originated during the past few million years from a supernova, it would contain iron-60, and so we decided to search more recent sediment to find out.”

“The lack of correlation with the Solar System’s time in the current Local Interstellar Cloud seems to pose more questions than it answers,”

The closest 10 white dwarfs are:

10 nearest white dwarfs
Star Distance
Sirius B 8.58 ly (2.63 pc)
Procyon B 11.43 ly (3.50 pc)
van Maanen's Star 14.04 ly (4.30 pc)
GJ 440 15.09 ly (4.63 pc)
40 Eridani B 16.25 ly (4.98 pc)
Stein 2051 B 18.06 ly (5.54 pc)
LP 44-113 20.0 ly (6.1 pc)
G 99-44 20.9 ly (6.4 pc)
L 97-12 25.8 ly (7.9 pc)
Wolf 489 26.7 ly (8.2 pc)

Hopefully it's one of these, there aren't any near Neutron Stars and we're in trouble if it's something more massive.
It could be the source of Oumuamua, hopefully there isn't anything else of that size heading our way.
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#18

Plutonium found in Pacific
I knew already knew of
Doc
Dopey
Sneezy
Sleepy
Happy
Grumpy
and Bashful.
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#19

Plutonium found in Pacific
(05-14-2021, 09:38 PM)Inkubus Wrote: Now there's a thing I always thought Plutonium didn't occur naturally.

Plutonium is formed the same way that any of the heavier elements are in supernovae and neutron star mergers. It doesn't have a stable isotope though, or even a long-lived one, so any primordial Plutonium that the Earth formed with decayed into other elements long ago. The same is true for every unstable isotope that doesn't have either a long half life (e.g. 235-U) or is produced by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere (e.g. 14-C). One more clue that the Earth isn't 6000 years old.
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#20

Plutonium found in Pacific
But...but...but....Jebus can change the laws of physics whenever he wants to!


Those assholes have an answer for everything, you know?
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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