3He in Earth's Core - origins

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Dennis P Brown
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3He in Earth's Core - origins

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Interesting article that explains that the Earth-Sun system formed deep in a nebula and accounts for the 3He in the core.

See:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 133609.htm
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Rich Feldman
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Re: 3He in Earth's Core - origins

Post by Rich Feldman »

Interesting article; thanks for sharing. The science reporting appears sloppy in places.
For example, contradictory statements in back-to-back sentences:

... helium-3 is made primarily in solar nebulae -- massive, spinning clouds of gas and dust like the one that gave rise to our Solar System. Because helium is one of the earliest elements produced in the universe, most helium-3 can be traced back to the Big Bang.

The statement "About 2,000 grams of helium-3 leak out of the Earth every year"
inspires question of how much 3He was ever "produced" industrially from tritium,
and/or lost from tritium storage and usage.
All models are wrong; some models are useful. -- George Box
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: 3He in Earth's Core - origins

Post by Dennis P Brown »

LOL; yes, these "science writers" are generally not science trained or else they'd be doing something else. Of course, this could be due to the writer never having proper training in professional or technical writing. So they simply lost track of what they really meant to say.

As for the measurement of the Helium-3 relative to the "core", I assume the real article explained how they obtained the samples. More likely deep gas wells so human production wouldn't play any roll. However, this is pure speculation on my part.

The main reason I posted this link was that 3He plays a role here. That our stellar formation 'location' within the nebular can be deduced from this measurement is rather surprising. As a FYI it is also very likely that a Red Giant star supplied part of the nebular gas due to the presence of micro-diamonds that are over 4.3 billion years old. Amazing that we can learn such details about the birth of our system now after 4.3 billion years.
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