The center of the earth (1 Viewer)

[Todd Hochard]

I'm too overcome right now.

That happened to me once when I put together a detailed post on a car website, detailing a 6 speed trans swap into old muscle cars. 45 minutes down the drain.

I'd be interested to hear your response, at your leisure, of course. I get the impression, from the article, that there may be several noted geo-physicists standing around saying "Hmmm, he might be somewhat right, but I won't stake my grant on it."

Todd

 

[Lance Nichols]

The fission reactor core sounds interesting, especially as a short while back I stumbled across links to Fossil Reactors and if that is possible, I can't see why some of the earth's core heat couldn't come from a BIG natural reactor.

 

[Andrew Testa]

Warning! the following is speculation, this is not my field of expertise.

It may be possible, but I have a hard time seeing it being at the core. Relative to iron, the heavy radioisotopes are extremely rare. The Earth differentiated into an iron core due to its abundance. The huge masses of iron would easily sink into the lighter elements to gather at the center. But I can't see the radioisotopes being in a large enough mass to sink into the center of the core. Indeed, as the articles on natural reactors indicates, if they did form such a mass they may have begun reacting while still in the mantle, provided that silicates can slow the neutrons.

If they did make it to the core there would be no intervening material to slow the neutrons and regulate the reaction. With the high pressures and large mass of isotopes the most likely reaction would be uncontrolled: a nuclear explosion. If the core did have uranium, and it did begin an uncontrolled reaction shortly after differentiation, it would have long ago (billions of years) extinguished the supply of fissionable material.

Most of the abstracts on these papers are too vague. I'd really like to read the paper to see in detail how the proponents of a nuclear core build their hypothesis.

I could believe that these natural reactors may have been common in the upper mantle. After all, that's where the basaltic material that produces uranium ore veins comes from. I have a hard time believing that the residual isotopes from the core somehow were transported to the surface. I don't see how they could escape from the core.

But who knows? I know barely enough nuclear physics to speculate, but I know a lot more about planetary formation.

Andy