#uranium-thorium dating

[mysticstronomy]

HOW OLD IS OUR SOLAR SYSTEM??

Blog#354

Saturday, December 2nd, 2023

Welcome back,

How old is the Solar System? That is a question that cuts to the heart of it all. By studying several things, mostly meteorites, and using radioactive dating techniques, specifically looking at daughter isotopes, scientists have determined that the Solar System is 4.6 billion years old. Well, give or take a few million years. That age can be extended to most of the objects and material in the Solar System.

The United States Geological Survey(USGS) website has a lot of indepth material about how the age of the Solar System was determined. The basics of it are that all material radioactively decays into a stable isotope. Some elements decay within nanoseconds while others have projected half-lives of over 100 billion years. The USGS based their study on minerals that naturally occur in rocks and have half-lives of 700 million to 100 billion years.

These dating techniques, known as radiometric dating, are firmly grounded in physics and are used to measure the last time that the rock being dated was either melted or disturbed sufficiently to re-homogenize its radioactive elements. This techniques returned an approximate age for meteorites of 4.6 billion years and Earth bound rocks around 4.3 billion years. The USGS admits that they were unable to find any rock that had not been altered by the Earths tectonic plates, so the age of the Earth could be refined in the future.

When the gasses of the early solar nebula began to cool, the first materials to condense into solid particles were rich in calcium and aluminum. Eventually solid particles of different elements clumped together to form the common building blocks of comets, asteroids, and planets. Astronomers have long thought that some of the Solar System’s oldest asteroids should be more enriched in calcium and aluminum, but, none had been identified until recently. The the Allende meteorite of 1969 was the first to show inclusions that were extremely rich in calcium and aluminum.

It took 40 years for the spectra of the inclusions to be discovered and then extrapolates to very old asteroids still in orbit around the Sun. Astronomer Jessica Sunshine and colleagues made this discovery with the support of NASA and the National Science Foundation. Additionally, the Universe is thought to have been created about 13.7 billion years ago.

Measuring two long-lived radioactive elements in meteorites, uranium-238 and thorium-232, has placed the age of the Milky Way at in the same time frame. From these measurements, it appears that large scale structures like galaxies formed relatively quickly after the Big Bang.

Originally published on www.universetoday.com

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, December 6th, 2023)

"WHAT IS THE INFORMATION PARADOX??"

#astronomy #outer space #alternate universe #astrophysics #universe #spacecraft #white universe #space #parallel universe #astrophotography #solar radius #solar energy #solar panel #solar system #solar eclipse #science #sunrise #sun

[fuckableelementspoll]

Round 1.2: Promethium (61) vs. Thorium (90)

Promethium (61)

Promethium is an extremely rare and radioactive element named for the ancient greek fire-origin myth of Prometheus. Promethium is unique for being one of two elements that all isotopes are radioactive below atomic number 82, the other being Technetium. Due to it's instability Promethium has few uses, mainly being used in phosphorescent substances. A unique and glowing dalliance.

Thorium (90)

Thorium is a silvery radioactive metal named after the ancient nordic god, Thor. Despite being radioactive, Thorium is very stable with a common isotope having a half-life of 14 billion years. Thorium is soft, malleable, and reactive, oxidizing readily in air. Thorium was used in radiometric dating, aromatics, gas mantles, welding, and nuclear power, although in modern times it has been mostly phased out. Modern applications are mainly, radiometric dating and certain glasses, although plans to use it in nuclear power are still being drafted. A more stable and less known cousin to Uranium if that tickles your fancy (literally maybe).

#fuckable elements poll #promethium #thorium #a god's duel #what better thing to link than numbers

[cosmic-courtroom]

can you give me the sparknotes versions of your top 3 interests/hyperfixations (if its parts of a series you can count them all as one and talk about more- or just talk about more than 3 because why not)

OKAY SO!!

1. project moon (lobcorp, ruina, limbus) : i’ve played all 3 games and the lore is SO good and SO immersive. the characters are phenomenal and their designs are really amazing and they’re done well!! the music is also absolutely AMAZING. in ruina and limbus, project mili has done some of the music for the game (limbus has one song but it’s so good) and if you have time, check it out possibly!! and then there’s the OTHER things outside of the three games, distortion detective, leviathan, and wonderlab! all still take place in The City! a place where all three games are set in and it gets so much more immersive and AUGH. i cannot stress how good the whole series is.

2. my own joint disorder & genetics (hEDS / hypermobile ehlers danlos syndrome) : okay so this one might be weird but. i promise i have a reason. i love genetics and how the human body works like that. it’s just genuinely interesting to me and how we don’t know exactly What gene causes this yet but we’re getting close!! sure it’s genuinely awful to have but having information on it is great and i love doing research and keeping up to date on stuff with it. like did you know that we’re getting closer because there was a test done with mice where we were able to tie their tails in little knots without hurting them because the mice became so hypermobile? if you wanna check some of the stuff out, its right here!! and if you wanna learn more, i implore you to do your own research, it’s honestly fascinating

3. radioactive shit (uranium, thorium, plutonium, etc) : but i strongly prefer collecting uranium glass due to the historical significance of it even if it depends on the company it came from, amount of glow it gives off (more glow = higher uranium% content. and if it’s not transparent and more of like. a frosted look, it’s very likely to be early 1900’s!! and i do enjoy the history of radioactivity

#anon ask #cosmic speaks #thanks for the ask about this stuff! honestly i love talking about it So.

[akscience3]

Thorium is better than Coal, Gas and Uranium... Comment your thoughts

#australian nuclear #clean energy #climate #climate change #global warming #nuclear #nuclear energy

[currenthunt]

Offshore Areas Mineral (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2023

Recently, the Parliament passed the Offshore Areas Mineral (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2023.The proposed amendment will bring major reform by introducing auction as the method of allocation of operating rights in the offshore areas.The objective behind the move is to use the national wealth in the sea for the overall development of the country.The OAMDR Act of 2002 came into force in 2010. However, no mining activity has been undertaken in the offshore areas to date. Hence, the Centre has proposed the amendments to bring several reforms in the offshore mining sector.The previous efforts to allocate offshore blocks faced challenges due to a lack of a proper legal framework and pending litigations over block allocations. Key Features of the Amendment Bill Introduction of Auction Regime - Two types of operating rights, production lease, and composite licence, to be granted through auction by competitive bidding exclusively to the private sector. - Operating rights to be granted to PSUs in the mineral bearing areas reserved by the Central Government. PSUs will be exclusively granted operating rights for atomic minerals. - Atomic minerals include mainly minerals containing uranium, thorium, rare metals, viz. niobium, tantalum, lithium, beryllium, titanium, zirconium, and Rare Earth Elements (REEs) as well as beach sand minerals. Fixed Period for Production Lease - The provision for renewal of production leases has been removed. - The production lease period is set at 50 years, aligning with the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 (MMDR Act) . Area Acquisition Limit - A limit has been imposed on the total area one entity can acquire offshore. - The maximum acquisition area is restricted to 45 minutes latitude by 45 minutes longitude for any mineral or prescribed group of associated minerals under one or more operating rights. Non-lapsable Offshore Areas Mineral Trust - To ensure funds for exploration, disaster relief, research, and benefits to affected parties, a non-lapsable Offshore Areas Mineral Trust will be established. - The trust will be funded by an additional levy on mineral production, not exceeding one third of the royalty, with the exact rate prescribed by the Central Government. Ease of Business and Timelines - Provisions for easy transfer of composite licence or production lease. - Timelines for commencement of production and dispatch after execution of production lease to ensure timely start of production. Revenues - Royalty, auction premium, and other revenues from mineral production in offshore areas will accrue to the Government of India. Need for Such an Amendment Bill Lack of Activity in Offshore Areas - Despite the enactment of the Offshore Areas Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act, 2002, there has been no mining activity in offshore areas. - This indicates a lack of interest or effective utilization of the vast maritime resources available to India. - The Amendment Bill seeks to address the underlying issues and incentivize exploration and mining in these offshore areas. Discretion and Lack of Transparency - The current Act suffers from the problem of discretion and lacks transparency in the allocation of operating rights for mining in offshore areas. - The Amendment Bill aims to introduce a transparent auction mechanism to allocate operating rights, inspired by the successful amendments to the MMDR Act for onshore areas. Harnessing Maritime Resources - India holds a unique Maritime Position, with an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covering over two million square kilometers, rich in recoverable resources. Geological Survey of India (GSI) estimates significant reserves of lime mud, construction-grade sand, heavy mineral placers, phosphorite, and polymetallic ferromanganese nodules and crusts in various offshore areas. - However, the potential of these resources remains largely untapped. The Amendment Bill seeks to harness the full potential of these maritime resources to support India's high-growth economy by promoting exploration and mining through the participation of both the public and private sectors. Read the full article

#BankPO #Bank_PO #BPSC #CurrentAffairs #Current_Affairs #DSSSB #Railway #UPSC #WBPSC

[idkmanfuckthisall]

New evidence from caves in Spain shows that Neanderthals engaged in complex symbolic thought—and were pretty good artists

the Neanderthal, a human ancestor that became extinct around 40,000 years ago, has traditionally been regarded as uncultured and behaviorally inferior. Now our recent study, published in Science in February, has challenged this view by showing that Neanderthals were able to create cave art.

The authors argue that, despite their oafish reputations in pop culture, Neanderthals were the cognitive equals of Homo sapiens

[There are three hand stencils (center right, center top, and top left) on this wall in Spain’s Maltravieso Cave. One of them is at least 66,000 years old and was made by Neanderthals. -H. Collado]

We used uranium-thorium dating to investigate cave art from three previously discovered sites in Spain. In La Pasiega, in northern Spain, we showed that a red linear motif is older than 64,800 years. In Ardales, in southern Spain, various red painted stalagmite formations date to different episodes of painting, including one between 45,300 and 48,700 years ago, and another before 65,500 years ago. In Maltravieso, in western central Spain, we showed a red hand stencil is older than 66,700 years.

At Cueva de los Aviones, a cave in southeastern Spain, researchers also found perforated seashell beads and pigments that are at least 115,000 years old.

These results demonstrate that cave art was being created in all three sites at least 20,000 years prior to the arrival of Homo sapiens in western Europe. They show for the first time that Neanderthals did produce cave art, and that it was not a one-off event. It was created in caves across the full breadth of Spain, and at Ardales it occurred at multiple times over at least an 18,000-year period. Excitingly, the types of paintings produced (red lines, dots, and hand stencils) are also found in caves elsewhere in Europe, so it would not be surprising if some of these were made by Neanderthals, too.

[In a cave in Spain, scientists found this ladder shape made of red horizontal and vertical lines. The artwork dates to more than 64,000 years ago, suggesting it was created by Neanderthals. PHOTOGRAPH BY P. SAURA]

We don’t know the exact meaning of the paintings, such as the ladder shape, but we do know they must have been important to Neanderthals. Some of them were painted in pitch black areas deep in the caves—requiring the preparation of a light source as well as the pigment. The locations appear deliberately selected, the ceilings of low overhangs or impressive stalagmite formations. These must have been meaningful symbols in meaningful places.

Our results are tremendously significant, both for our understanding of Neanderthals and for the emergence of behavioral complexity in the human lineage. Neanderthals undoubtedly had the capacity for symbolic behavior, much like contemporaneous modern human populations residing in Africa.

Modern humans may have “replaced” Neanderthals, but it is becoming increasingly clear that Neanderthals had similar cognitive and behavioral abilities—they were, in fact, equally “human.”

source/ source 2

#these arent the entire articles just the gist of both of them combined. #time capsule

[kirusha49]

Dating in Barranquilla

Dr Danišik said there is huge potential for the technique when it came to more accurately dating eruptions in New Zealand. Hence it is far more useful than the original TL technique in dating buildings. A relatively short-range dating technique is based on the decay of uranium-234 into thorium-230, a substance with a half-life of about 80,000 years. A fair deal of this criticism is deserved; X wasn’t designed with personal single-user desktops in mind and, as a result, it has accumulated quite a bit of cruft over the years in the form of various confusing standards that attempt to bolt modern paradigms onto an aging model. This post will go over some of the smaller things that can be done via Xlib with a minimal amount of pain and confusion. Because the concept of window “frontness” is purely decided by the window manager and not the X server itself, Xlib must rely on standards like the Extended Window Manager Hints to suggest changes in visibility to the window manager running above it. נערות ליווי בתל אביב והמרכז On non-EWMH compliant window managers, therefore, this should fail gracefully. 4. Map the Window to the Display and flush it all for displaying. An innovative method co-developed by a Waikato University researcher has been used to verify what is the world's oldest known map and will have significant uses in better understanding New Zealand's volcanic history. The method involved using special types of equipment, on of which is the so called Ultra High Vacuum Helium Extraction Line. Amino acids can exist in two different mirror-image forms (L and D type) that can be differentiated using polarized light. Despite national differences in corporate law, corporations share a set of legal characteristics which define this type of organization; these include (a) having legal person status, (b) having limited liability, and (c) having the ability to transfer shares, as well as (d) sharing ownership of resources and (e) having a centralized management under a company board. Well done with those 2 matches Sasha. Already well established and frozen as version 11 (hence “X11”) well before the initial release of Linux in 1991, X is a relic of an earlier time in computing, complete with a codebase widely panned for doing too much, too little, and failing to do anything well in the process.

We had someone who submitted an application and then by the time we saw it, it was too late to actually go book the ticket and they had made other plans for the date. • We’ve made our application as user-friendly and straightforward as possible. Another possible red flag - Tinder's operating margin in the first half of 2015 fell to 14 percent from 23 percent a year earlier, largely because of a rise in the cost of revenue. We do follow ups after every first date and check in with successful matches after three months and again after six months. If scientists find a layer of volcanic ash with a known date on one side of a valley and also find a layer of ash with the same chemical fingerprint somewhere else in the valley, they can assume these layers were laid down at the same time. We were interested to see if the youngest of the volcanic deposits were the same age as the settlement. Compiled just as above, this produces them same plain window, but with dimensions no smaller than 200x200 and no larger than 800x800 after resizing.

Our plain window is fine and dandy, but what happens if a user tries to resize it beyond the size of our (non-resizable) window contents? We rigorously vet every user just to make sure people aren't using our app for unlawful purposes. Not getting the opportunity to meet good single people? You’ll meet an agent for a private and confidential conversation. Keep your personal details personal: Never share personal information or photos with someone you don’t know and trust - especially photos or webcam calls of a private nature. The scammer needs the victim to pay their phone bills or buy a new laptop so they can keep communicating with the victim. Our impressive database of users, along with precise and thoughtful matching techniques, ensures that we can find amazing matches compatible with your personality, taste and location. But signing up in dating sites or apps will let them find the kind of women they’re looking for.

[nebris]

Elizabeth Rona (20 March 1890 – 27 July 1981) was a Hungarian nuclear chemist, known for her work with radioactive isotopes.  After developing an enhanced method of preparing polonium samples, she was recognized internationally as the leading expert in isotope separation and polonium preparation. Between 1914 and 1918, during her postdoctoral study with George de Hevesy, she developed a theory that the velocity of diffusion depended on the mass of the nuclides. As only a few atomic elements had been identified, her confirmation of the existence of "Uranium-Y" (now known[1] as thorium-231) was a major contribution to nuclear chemistry. She was awarded the Haitinger Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1933.

After immigrating to the United States in 1941, she was granted a Carnegie Fellowship to continue her research and provided technical information on her polonium extraction methods to the Manhattan Project. Later in her career, she became a nuclear chemistry professor at the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies and after 15 years there transferred to the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Miami. At both Oak Ridge and Miami, she continued her work on the geochronology of seabed elements and radiometric dating. She was posthumously inducted into the Tennessee Women's Hall of Fame in 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Rona

[the-firebird69]

My son has absolutely no reason to fulfill your requests and won't and what you're doing is so illegal we're going to cook you with it you're such a losers your mouth open and all the time you're blabbing and blabbing

It's only a matter of time before you get it you'll get it soon enough you can send the case Monday morning

We see because the money is not moving it's not getting the money that he sued for in one and you don't seem to understand the courts and was found in our favor and the judge ordered that the monies be distributed

And that was today at 10:00 a.m. and he sent the order downstairs and you guys looked at it that's all you did. The court again calling you up to the courtroom for real and said why don't you delivering that and got answers there's too many people here saying not to deliver it that he's going to do something because we're threatening him I started resting people and found out what it was and you're going slowly on it and our son says I have a parallel and I don't do anything because people are threatening me you may have looked like that to them because they're stupid but that's just the way it is I guess we're going to have to get rid of them.

Bitol and Goddess Wife

It sounds intriguing I wonder what this one thing is where he was what company bunch of losers I think it was threatened into something I know him he just keeps on doing it cuz he has to and he's doing something because he wants to and there's a bunch of candy asses here and retards and losers and Low life's. I'm wondering something are you people really this dumb so I have to find out what it is it sounds intriguing preposterous and very true that his son has this issue and he's very happy that his father found it because boy you people and they ain't assholes the hell you threatening for how's it work you're not going to know how it works he says cuz you're not going to be here I use them for a vehicle cuz I was forced to you don't even know what that means it's so freaking daft I hear it too you people sound stupid and really really one dimensional maybe they're uranium miners I get the deal I need you out all of you

Mac

It's about three octaves higher than what it should be no Mac Daddy needs you out you're a bunch of losers and we're trying to figure out something if you know what I'm talking about what makes you think you're going to last and you saw us wipe out all these other people

Bitol and Goddess Wife

We get all the sudden stuff with threats and we think it'll work that way

Bg

Who cares what you think you're a toddler I didn't come with threats like this on me what happens to you here is I get you kill or have you killed if you're threatening me directly constantly with two people are you of any people should know but I guess if you get shot in the head you're stupid right that's what happens to you people that's nothing to worry about I guess

Zues Hera

I guess he's right we're all going around shooting each other in the head and that's what happens when you threaten him directly so going to keep doing it cuz we're already shot

Bg

But I know is you're not supposed to be the guy saying it so I can't figure out what you're saying it for he said you think you're just sitting there threatening and you got stuff and he was at hodus. Not so sure you understand what we're talking about BG

Mac

I sat there and threatened him everyday having a job and I was threatening him too I think that's why I got stuff

Bg

It's probably why 911 happened. I sent the threatening me overtly and I noticed that I was being threatened and it was a pain and 9/11 happens I was there and I got moved to China, not much bozos that they threaten me over there and threatened me afterwards to do what you people are doing here run me around with no money threaten my house and threaren where I get stuff feels like. I still have to try and run my plan and to date you don't have thorium and you just idiots threatening for other stuff who knows if you even know what time is anymore

Zues Hera

What you're saying is we're not threatening for thorium and you're not about to let us have any at all for them where you're saying because of our idiotic threats and constant threats and abuse everybody knows about thorium and we're all fighting over it most specifically Donald Trump announced it with his Reverend blue jean s*** in the park so we're aware of that forget what he did and why I didn't understand what kind of screwed and still didn't do enough and Tommy f was inside of some of them and had a bunch of little balls and we're still blaming you this is ridiculous remember me threatening in that bad ended up in Rhode Island it's like this Little Italy bunch of threatening mad Men and Tommy f was there but really it was Robert Shaker was Trump and he f***** up so bad so quick he's an ass and a guy BjA is an ass, when you got back it was George Junior then Obama and then Trump so they probably think they threatened for the presidency and won't stop doing it and they were doing North Port. But they got an office I started threatening more and get worse and worse while they're in office so I'm trying to impeach them and they still keep threatening

Bg

We know so Dennis showed up which is Dan at HMC in North Carolina and things started going downhill and it was already crappy because Bill London was Trump feed him like s*** is a horrible person to him honestly wonders if he knows anything I'm so sick of this stupid show Atlanta daily people we know who you are this lawsuit's going to do it eventually ridiculous buffoons I just idiot and Morgan and Morgan we're going to sue him for everything it's worth every penny you also are afraid of us and won't shut your f****** mouth about anything you keep laughing and sassing and harassing you're a bunch of meaning he said it take you down we don't want these ladies around me it's unsafe they're unsanitary he changed the entire automobile industry and he's going to do it again and you guys didn't do anything for centuries so damn slow we're doing it on purpose the zero fuel motorcycle has been introduced and none of you have one it works with a damn.

Really going to town on you tonight rip you out of here demanding it asking I know what it is I put it to Olympus and they were astonished it has to do better research than what we're doing

Bitol and Goddess Wife

Not all of us were astonished and put it to them many times and they said to do with it and I explained it and finally I heard you better listen this one and we're missing the point it's disappointed we should be taking it and finally got it acknowledged and we're going after him for it loses fell for it and a bunch of losers

Thor Freya

You remember soccer someone can't remember what it is we figured it out we went after them and they suck I'm going to hit them now

Olympus

[vaicomcas]

The Neanderthals

Hey, maybe this is the prequel that should have been made.

Some recent discoveries of Neanderthal art.  Anything older than 45000 years in the right regions are assumed to be Neanderthal in origin, because that’s when homo sapiens came on the scene.

1. Cave paintings 65,000 years old.  Publications in Science (reported here in Nature) and PNAS in 2018 and 2021.  Very thorough analyses using uranium-thorium dating, scanning electron microscopy, several types of spectroscopy etc.  What they did not know is some of it is Neanderthal poetry, perfectly in tune with the spheres.

I especially liked the name of the PNAS paper: “ The symbolic role of the underground world among Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals.” There is evidence that the Neanderthals were going to this cave to splash paint over thousands of years.

2. 51,000 year old deer bone carvings with angled lines to create a pattern, clearly intentional, reflecting abstract thought (article here).  Note that these were found in a cave in central Germany called “unicorn cave”.  

#I didn't mention Castiel in this long post but of course this is about castiel #castiel rooted for Neanderthals #castiel loves Neanderthal poetry #everything is castiel #castiel

[sciencespies]

600 cubes of Nazi uranium went missing in the US. These scientists are on the hunt

https://sciencespies.com/humans/600-cubes-of-nazi-uranium-went-missing-in-the-us-these-scientists-are-on-the-hunt/

600 cubes of Nazi uranium went missing in the US. These scientists are on the hunt

On someone’s desk, one of the little gray cubes wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. To the untrained eye, they look like paperweights.

“Marie Curie‘s granddaughter has one. She uses it as a doorstop,” Miriam Hiebert, a historian and materials scientist, told Insider.

The weight of the 2-inch (5 cm) objects might be surprising, though – each is about 5 pounds (2 kg). That’s because they’re made of the heaviest element on Earth: uranium.

The cubes were once part of experimental nuclear reactors the Nazis designed during World War II. As far as researchers know, only 14 cubes remain in the world, out of more than 1,000 used in Nazi Germany’s experiments with nuclear weapons.

Over 600 were captured and brought back to the US in the 40s. But even after that, what happened to most of the cubes is still unclear.

Hiebert and Timothy Koeth, a professor of material science and engineering at the University of Maryland, are writing a book about the cubes. After years of research, they told Insider they think they know what happened.

Miriam Hiebert and Timothy Koeth. (John T. Consoli/UMD)

Small cubes with a long history

Koeth describes the cubes as “the only living relic” of Nazi Germany’s nuclear effort.

“They are the motivation for the entire Manhattan project,” he said.

Leading up to the war, Germany was a world leader in physics, and the science of nuclear energy was in its infancy. In 1938, German chemist Otto Hahn revealed that he’d created fission by blasting neutrons at a uranium core.

Scientists fleeing Europe, including Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, alerted the US that Germany could develop an atomic bomb. The arms race was on.

In its natural form, uranium is not very radioactive. So the cubes aren’t very dangerous. But apply a neutron to uranium, specifically the isotope U-235, and it cracks open “like a piñata,” as Koeth put it.

“You smash it open with a neutron, and new elements come out, and also more neutrons,” he said.

To create an explosion, this must happen in a chain reaction: The neutron gets captured by another uranium atom, which splits open, creating more neutrons, and so on. To make that possible, the neutrons need to get slowed down by a substance called a moderator.

The US used graphite for that, and it worked. Scientists with the Manhattan Project created a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in December 1942. But the leaders of Nazi Germany’s nuclear program, Werner Heisenberg and Kurt Diebner, picked heavy water as their moderator: water in which the hydrogen atoms are replaced with deuterium. Cubes of uranium would be dipped into the water.

The Nazis developed two prototype reactors, the larger of which had 664 uranium cubes strung from a plate and suspended over a pit of heavy water. The smaller reactor used about 400 cubes.

The “Alsos” mission

The Allied forces didn’t know how far along the Nazi nuclear program was. And they were nervous.

So in 1943, the Allies launched a secret mission – the codename was “Alsos” – to find out. A team of about a dozen people, including soldiers, scientists, and interpreters, traveled through Italy, France, and Germany searching for traces of the Nazis’ nuclear experiments. Then as the war neared its end, the mission’s objective shifted to making sure nuclear material (or scientists) wouldn’t make it into the hands of the Soviets.

In April 1945, Allied forces found and captured about 1.6 tons of uranium cubes in southern Germany. Heisenberg, his team, and the larger of Germany’s two reactors – neither of which ever worked – had previously been hiding there. Nearly all the cubes were sent back to the US. The Alsos mission never found the smaller reactor.

Alsos intelligence officers after locating German uranium cubes, Haigerloch, Germany. (Samuel Goudsmit/AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)

Cubes were picked off the pile

After the cubes arrived in the US, Hiebert said, their trail went cold. The US was highly secretive about its own nuclear program, so there aren’t many public records about the Nazi uranium.

“We currently know of 14, out of almost 1,000 that existed in total,” she said, “so most of them are still unaccounted for.”

But those 14 offer clues about what may have happened to the rest.

Koeth, who has been an avid collector of nuclear objects since his early teens, has two of the 14. Both were given to him by colleagues. The first was a birthday present about a decade ago, but the giver asked to remain anonymous and Koeth won’t reveal how they got the cube.

It came with a handwritten note that read: “Taken from Germany from nuclear reactor Hitler tried to build. Gift of Ninninger.”

The note that accompanied Koeth’s cube. (Timothy Koeth)

Robert D. Nininger, it turns out (his name has just one n), was a geologist for the US Atomic Energy Commission in the 50s. Koeth and Hiebert found documents that show he worked with the Manhattan Project. Geologists with the project had the difficult job of sourcing uranium.

“Just figuring out where to get it from was a huge task,” Hiebert said.

Koeth’s other cube came from a former faculty member at the University of Maryland, who in turn had gotten it from another faculty member, Dick Duffey. During the war, Duffey, a chemical engineer, had worked at a plant in Beverly, Massachusetts, that processed scrap uranium, Koeth said.

Based on these findings and others, Hiebert and Koeth think most of the Nazi cubes that made it to the US were repurposed and used in America’s own nuclear program. But some, they think, got “picked off the pile” and kept as souvenirs.

As for the 400 cubes from the second reactor, Hiebert and Koeth found some documents suggesting they were sold on the black market to what became the USSR.

From a nuclear reactor to counter-proliferation efforts

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory owns another one of the Nazi cubes but doesn’t have records documenting its history.

So two scientists there, Jon Schwantes and Brittany Robertson, recently figured out a new way to date the cube – and other uranium products – more precisely than was previously possible. To do so, they measured the levels of two atoms, protactinium and thorium, that accumulate over time as uranium decays.

In a presentation last month at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, Schwantes and Robertson revealed that when they applied the method to their lab’s cube, the results put it squarely in the expected age range – it dates back to the years Nazi Germany was developing nuclear weapons.

Today, though, the cube has a different function: “The primary purpose it is used for is training,” Schwantes told Insider.

The national laboratory teaches security personnel how to recognize nuclear and radioactive material on sight. So the cube offers a good training example.

“I find that really kind of an interesting storyline for this cube – that it was first produced for somebody’s nuclear program, and now it’s being used for nuclear nonproliferation,” Schwantes said.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

More from Business Insider:

#Humans

#Humans

[archaeologicalnews]

Dating questions challenge whether Neanderthals drew Spanish cave art

Ancient European cave paintings recently attributed to Neanderthals have ignited an ongoing controversy over the actual age of those designs and, as a result, who made them.

The latest volley in this debate, published October 21 in the Journal of Human Evolution, contends that rock art in three Spanish caves that had been dated to at least roughly 65,000 years ago may actually be  tens of thousands of years younger. If so, then Stone Age humans could have created the painted symbols and hand outlines. Neanderthals died out by around 40,000 years ago.

An international group of 44 researchers, led by archaeologist Randall White of New York University, concludes that the controversial age estimates, derived from uranium-thorium dating, must be independently confirmed by other dating techniques. Those approaches include radiocarbon dating and thermoluminescence dating, which estimates the time since sediment was last exposed to sunlight. Read more.

#archaeology #cave paintings #archeology #neanderthals #spain

[sciencenewsforstudents]

Nearly 10,000 years ago, the body of a young woman ended up in a dry cave in southern Mexico. Her bones, discovered by divers in the now-submerged cave, are revealing clues to a short, hard life as well as the history of the first Americans.  

Traditionally, scientists thought just one group of humans crossed a land bridge connecting Asia to North America around 12,000 years ago. But sinkhole caves in the Yucatán Peninsula have yielded nine other skeletons, including a teenage girl linked to modern native Americans (SN: 5/15/14), that suggest humans had already reached that far south by roughly 12,000 years ago.

Explorers mapping a Yucatán cave called Chan Hol found this new female skeleton, dubbed Chan Hol 3, in 2016.  Salty cave water degrades collagen in bones, stymieing usual radiocarbon dating methods. But low levels of uranium and thorium in calcite mineral deposits from stalactites that dripped onto Chan Hol 3’s fingers pegged her skeleton to at least 9,900 years old, researchers report February 5 in PLOS ONE.

Divers, led by Jerónimo Avilés Olguín (pictured), were combing the Chan Hol cave for small bones from different skeleton when they happened to discover the partial remains of a woman now dubbed Chan Hol 3, or Ixchel, after the Maya goddess of fertility.

CREDIT: EUGENIO ACEVEZ

Tooth cavities indicate she lived on a high-sugar diet until she died around age 30. While it’s unclear what killed her, over the years, she sustained three skull injuries — all show healing — and suffered from a bacterial infection.

Comparing Chan Hol 3’s skull to those from Mexico in the same time period revealed two distinct patterns: round skulls with low foreheads in the Yucatán, like Chan Hol 3’s, and longer skulls in Central Mexico. That suggests two human groups — probably with different looks and cultures — coexisted in Mexico around 12,000 to 8,000 years ago, say geoarchaeologist Silvia Gonzalez of the Liverpool John Moores University in England and her colleagues.

Genetic studies could determine whether the two groups had different geographic origins or represent members of the same group that split in Mexico and quickly adapted to their varied environments, she says.

#science #scied #sciblr #archaeology

[earthstory]

Diamonds are forever and Zircons are too

Many people have heard the saying ‘diamonds are forever’ but very few know about Zircon, a mineral that, at the very least, should be recognised for its longevity. The zircon below (0.0157 inches long) from the Jack Hills in Australia is the oldest rock fragment on Earth at 4.375 billion years old! To put this in perspective, that is only 165 million years after the Earth formed and less than 100 million years later than the massive impact event that produced our moon.

So what makes a Zircon so special? We have all heard of the impressive properties of diamonds, they sit at the top of the Mohs Scale of hardness after all, but this isn’t the only attribute you need to live forever.

Zircon belongs to a group called the nesosilicates, a collection of minerals defined by isolated SiO4 ions that are connected by interstitial cations (small atoms or ions that occupy the space between larger ions or atoms), in this case Zirconium. The mineral can come in a wide variety of colours, with gem quality specimens known as Matura-diamonds due to their resemblance to the real thing.

One of the key properties of Zircon is that it is chemically inert. This means it won’t react with other elements and therefore retains its chemical composition over time. It is also very hard, coming in at 7.5 on the Mohs Scale of Hardness; pretty impressive when you consider that a steel nail is only 6.5.

Furthermore, zircon is present in sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks, meaning it will be present in a wide variety of samples. The minerals also contain Uranium and Thorium, allowing them to be radiometrically dated even if they are billions of years old. So, how do you make sure you win the award for oldest piece of rock? It’s easy as one, two three:

Be abundant - the more of you there are and the more rock types you can occur in the higher the chance you’ll be found at the surface!

Be hardy - you’ve got a whole lot of weathering, erosion and chemical alteration to survive if you are going to exist for over 4 billion years (The zircon from Jack Hills is thought to have originally formed in a granite, a very different rock to the one it is hosted in now!)

Be dateable - There is no point in existing for billions of years and making your way to the surface just so a geologist can look at how shiny you are! Containing radioactive Uranium and Thorium is a sure fire way of getting dated and appreciated for the wonder you really are!

So there you have it, next time someone tells you diamonds are forever, just spare a thought for humble little Zircon, the oldest mineral on Earth.

Watson

References: http://bit.ly/1DKiNUq http://bit.ly/1EgW6Fh http://bit.ly/1mBLj3Q

Further Reading: http://bit.ly/1hPc5DO http://bit.ly/1FDLUrI

Image Credit: John Valley – Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison Rob Lavinsky - Irocks.com

#mineral #zircon #geology #geochemistry #mineralogy #crystal #uranium #thorium #radioactive #jack hills #erosion #mohs #hardness #research #the earth story #science #immortality

[scifigeneration]

Climate change fueled the rise and demise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, superpower of the ancient world

by Ashish Sinha and Gayatri Kathayat

Ashurbanipal, last major ruler of the Assyrian Empire, couldn’t outrun the effects of climate change. British Museum, CC BY-ND

Ancient Mesopotamia, the fabled land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, was the command and control center of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This ancient superpower was the largest empire of its time, lasting from 912 BC to 609 BC in what is now modern Iraq and Syria. At its height, the Assyrian state stretched from the Mediterranean and Egypt in the west to the Persian Gulf and western Iran in the east.

Then, in an astonishing reversal of fortune, the Neo-Assyrian Empire plummeted from its zenith (circa 650 BC) to complete political collapse within the span of just a few decades. What happened?

Numerous theories attempt to explain the Assyrian collapse. Most researchers attribute it to imperial overexpansion, civil wars, political unrest and Assyrian military defeat by a coalition of Babylonian and Median forces in 612 BC. But exactly how these two small armies were able to annihilate what was then the most powerful military force in the world has mystified historians and archaeologists for more than a hundred years.

Our new research published in the journal Science Advances sheds light on these mysteries. We show that climate change was the proverbial double-edged sword that first contributed to the meteoric rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then to its precipitous collapse.

An artist’s vision of the interior of an Assyrian palace, based on drawings made in 1849 by Austen Henry Layard on the site of 19th century excavations. New York Public library digital collections, CC BY-ND

Booming right up to an unexpected bust

The Neo-Assyrian state was an economic powerhouse. Its formidable war machine boasted a large standing army with cavalry, chariots and iron weaponry. For over two centuries, the mighty Assyrians waged relentless military campaigns with ruthless efficiency. They conquered, plundered and subjugated major regional powers across the Near and Middle East, as each Assyrian king tried to outshine his predecessor.

Ashurbanipal, the last great king of Assyria, ruled this vast empire from the ancient city of Nineveh, the ruins of which lie across the Tigris River from modern Mosul, Iraq. Nineveh was a sprawling metropolis of unprecedented size and grandeur filled with temples and palace complexes, with exotic gardens that were watered by an extensive system of canals and aqueducts.

And then it all ended within just a few years. Why?

Our research group wanted to investigate climate conditions over the few centuries when the Neo-Assyrian Empire took hold and then eventually collapsed.

Building a picture of climate 2,600 years ago

For clues about rainfall patterns over northern Mesopotamia, we turned to Kuna Ba cave, located near Nineveh.

Our colleagues collected samples from the cave’s stalagmites. These are the cone-like structures that point upward from the cave floor. They grow slowly, from the ground up, as rainwater drips down from the cave ceiling, depositing dissolved minerals.

The layers of a stalagmite record the climate conditions of the time when they were created. Ashish Sinha, CC BY-ND

The rainwater naturally contains heavy and light isotopes of oxygen – that is, atoms of oxygen that have different numbers of neutrons. Subtle variations in the oxygen isotope ratios can be sensitive indicators of climatic conditions at the time the rainwater originally fell. As stalagmites grow, they lock into their structure the oxygen isotope ratios of the percolating rainwater that seeps into the cave.

We painstakingly pieced together the climatic history of northern Mesopotamia by carefully drilling into stalagmites, across their growth rings, which are similar to those of trees. In each sample, we measured the oxygen isotope ratios to build a timeline of how conditions changed. That told us the order of events but didn’t tell us the amount of time that elapsed between them.

Luckily, the stalagmites also trap uranium, an element that’s ever-present in trace amounts in the infiltrating water. Over time, uranium decays into thorium at a predictable pace. So the dating experts on our research team made scores of high-precision uranium-thorium measurements on stalagmite growth layers.

Together these two kinds of measurements let us anchor our climate record to precise calendar years.

Unusual wet period, then massive drought

Now a direct comparison of the stalagmite climate record with the historical and archaeological records from the region was possible. We wanted to place the key events of Neo-Assyrian history into the long-term context of our climate reconstruction.

We found that the most significant expansion phase of the Neo-Assyrian state occurred during a two-centuries-long interval of anomalously wet climate, as compared with the previous 4,000 years. Called a megapluvial period, this time of unusually high rainfall was immediately followed by megadroughts during the early-to-mid-seventh century BC. These ancient dry conditions were as severe as recent droughts in Iraq and Syria but lasted for decades. The period marking the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire occurred well within this time frame.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire rose during an unusual time of wet climate and collapsed soon after conditions swung to unusual dryness. Ashish Sinha, CC BY-ND

Mindful of the caveat that correlation doesn’t imply causation, we were interested in how this wild climate swing – an unusually rainy period that ended in drought – could have influenced an empire.

While the Neo-Assyrian state was huge in its final few decades, its economic core was always confined to a rather small region. This relatively small area in northern Mesopotamia served as a primary source of agricultural revenues and powered Assyrian military campaigns.

We argue that nearly two centuries of unusually wet conditions in this otherwise semi-arid region allowed for agriculture to flourish and energized the Assyrian economy. The climate acted as a catalyst for the creation of a dense network of urban and rural settlements in the unsettled zones that previously hadn’t been able to support farming.

Our data show the wet period abruptly ended and the pendulum swung the other way. In the grips of recurring megadroughts, the Assyrian core and its hinterlands would have been engulfed within a “zone of uncertainty” – a corridor of land where the rainfall is highly erratic and any rain-fed agriculture comes with a large risk of crop failure.

Repeated crop failures likely exacerbated the political unrest in Assyria, crippled its economy and empowered the adjacent rival states.

Uncertain climate, unsustainable growth

Our findings have current-day implications.

In modern times, the same region that once constituted the Assyrian core has been repeatedly struck by multiyear droughts. The catastrophic drought of 2007–2008 in northern Iraq and Syria, the most severe in the past 50 years, led to cereal crop failures across the region.

Droughts like this one offer a glimpse of what Assyrians endured during the mid-seventh century BC. And the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire offers a warning to today’s societies.

Climate change is here to stay. In the 21st century, people have what Neo-Assyrians did not: the benefit of hindsight and plenty of observational data. Unsustainable growth in politically volatile and water-stressed regions is a time-tested recipe for disaster.

About The Authors:

Ashish Sinha is Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences at California State University, Dominguez Hills and Gayatri Kathayat is Associate Professor of Global Environmental Change at Xi'an Jiaotong University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

#climate change #history #climate science