Month: May 2021

A Japanese oil exploration company recently unearthed some samples from the Pacific and donated them to researchers. These researchers, led by Dr. Anton Wallner from the Australian National University, then found the first evidence of a radioactive isotope of plutonium that originally came from space. Scientists are now trying to understand what this isotope and another fascinating extraterrestrial might have created, and what this might have meant for the cosmic neighborhood of Earth a few million years ago.

In addition to the plutonium, Dr. Wallner and his team also made a unique form of iron. This iron isotope also appears to come from a different source than the plutonium obtained from the same sample.

Discussion of how to find the age of certain elements.
Photo credit: Ars Technica YouTube channel

The iron isotope iron-60 is the most common of the two radioactive isotopes found. It has a half-life of around 2.6 million years, but was found in rocks, lunar samples, and even in snow. Given the (relatively) short half-life of this form of iron, it seems clear that the samples found in various locations around the world were not part of the material that formed the earth about 4 billion years ago.

Iron is one of the heavier elements, and this particular isotope of iron is likely made in a supernova. Dr. Wallner and his team also compared the iron-60 in their most recent sample with those previously described and found that they likely came from various supernova events. One took place about 3 million years ago while another took place about 6 million years ago.

UT video about the different types of supernova.

The iron-60 produced in these explosions reached Earth, where it rained and was eventually absorbed by the ocean floor. Such an active nearby cosmic neighborhood is very different from the present calm part of the galaxy through which our planet sails and has implications for the evolution of life as well as the chemical makeup of the earth itself.

Plutonium is even more fascinating than iron. The specific isotope that Dr. Wallner and his team have found is actually the most stable of the plutonium isotopes – P-244. However, it does not naturally exist on earth. So if you find it in terrestrial rocks, it was created elsewhere.

UT video about neutron star fusions.

For much heavier elements like plutonium, most scientists think that even a supernova is not powerful enough to create it. The current hypothesis is that extremely heavy elements are formed in extremely violent events such as the merging of two neutron stars, which can also generate gravitational waves.

However, this is one of the first pieces of evidence of a violent event occurring close enough to Earth that the planet itself was colonized by this relatively short-lived isotope, whose half-life is 81 million years. This puzzle can be solved in two ways: Either scientists need to rethink how plutonium-244 was formed, or they need to reevaluate whether the Earth has been close to an immense explosion at some point in the not-too-distant past.

RAS video of the stars around us.
Photo credit: Royal Astronomical Society YouTube channel

In any event, these results have been hailed in the scientific community as the culmination of years of searching for precisely these types of samples. The world can thank a Japanese oil exploration crew for excavating one of the most interesting pieces of rock they could have. We can also look forward to further evidence that will help inform the genesis of these otherworldly radioisotopes.

Learn more:
ANU – Alien radioactive element prompts rethinking when creating
OPB / NPR – Freshly made plutonium from space on the ocean floor
Science – 60Fe and 244Pu deposited on Earth are limiting R-process yields from recent supernovae nearby
UT – A supernova that exploded dangerously close to Earth 2.5 million years ago
UT – Exploding Stars are titanium factories

Mission statement:
Incorrect color residue from a Supernova N132D.
Photo credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Harvard-Smithsonian CfA

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Reposted by NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW THAT

May 20, 2021

By Paul Homewood

Harrabin’s little dream didn’t last long then!

Asian energy officials on Wednesday denied the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) demand not to make new investments in oil, natural gas and coal for the world in order to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2050, viewing this approach as too narrow .

The IEA, which had previously advocated the oil and gas industry, outlined a net zero emissions path this week that proposed halting new investments in oil, gas and coal supplies, coal-fired power plants in advanced economies by 2030 shut down and ban the sale of new internal combustion engines by 2035.

Energy companies in Australia, the largest per capita carbon emitter among the world’s richest nations, and officials in Japan and the Philippines said there are many ways to get to zero, even though the IEA said his path was “the most technically feasible, the cost-effective and socially acceptable “.

Akihisa Matsuda, deputy director of international affairs at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), said the government has no plans to stop investing in oil, gas and coal immediately.

“The report proposes how the world can reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, but it is not necessarily in line with the policies of the Japanese government,” he said.

“Japan needs to protect its energy security, including a stable electricity supply, so we will align this with our goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.”

Japan was the region’s third largest carbon emitter after China and India in 2019, according to the BP Statistical Review of Energy.

“NO SIZE FITS EVERYONE”

Australia’s leading oil and gas industry and mining lobby groups said there is “no one size fits all” to decarbonization.

“The IEA report does not take into account future technologies and offsets for negative emissions from outside the energy sector – two things that are likely to happen that will enable important and necessary future development of oil and gas fields,” said Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association Chief Executive Andrew McConville said.

Australia’s largest independent gas producer, Woodside Petroleum (WPL.AX), said it plans to make a final investment decision for a $ 11 billion investment to develop a new gas field off Western Australia in late 2021.

“For its part, Woodside works with its customers, all of whom are located in countries that are committed to net zero, to ensure we can provide them with the energy they need to reach their decarbonization pathways,” said a Woodside -Speaker.

Australia on Wednesday allocated $ 600 million ($ 467 million) in tax dollars to build a new gas-fired power plant to support wind and solar power. Energy Secretary Angus Taylor said it was a pragmatic move. Continue reading

In the Philippines, where coal will remain the dominant source of energy for years even after new proposals for coal-fired power plants have been banned, Energy Minister Alfonso Cusi said that the energy transition should be “fuel and technology neutral”.

Cutting funding for oil, gas and coal without taking efficiency and competitiveness into account would “undermine the Philippines’ aspiration to join the higher middle income countries,” he said.

As the world converts to renewable energy, the demand for coal is expected to continue to be strong over the next few decades as some countries are still building new coal-fired power plants, said Hendra Sinadia, executive director of the Indonesia Coal Mining Association.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/asia-snubs-ieas-call-stop-new-fossil-fuel-investments-2021-05-19/?mc_cid=bd78d89ed6&mc_eid=4961da7cb1

Just the other day I wondered what planet Roger Harrabin was on after he and Matt McGrath treated this IEA report respectfully as if the rest of the world were taking the slightest notice. Now we know it’s not this one!

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Researchers at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics published an article last week that may explain a mysterious gap in planet size beyond our solar system. Planets between 1.5 and 2 times the radius of the earth are remarkably rare. This new research suggests that this could be because planets slightly larger than these, called mini-Neptunes, lose their atmosphere and shrink over time to become “super-earths” that are only slightly larger as our home planet. These changing planets only briefly have the right size radius to fill the void and are rapidly shrinking beyond that. The implication for planetary research is exciting as it confirms that planets are not static objects, but evolving and dynamic worlds.

Exoplanet research is a very young field. In 1992 no one had seen a planet beyond our solar system. Today we have discovered more than 4,700 of them, and that number is growing rapidly due to the efforts of dedicated space telescopes for planet hunting such as Kepler (now defunct) and its successor, TESS. We have suddenly gained a huge new sample size of planets to study, beyond the eight planets (sorry Pluto) orbiting our sun.

Kepler, TESS and other planet hunters have discovered brand new types of planets, such as so-called “hot Jupiter”, large gas giants that orbit very close to their star. These were among the first observed exoplanets because their size made them easy to find, and their small, rapid orbital times, allowed them to pass in front of their star more than once in a short amount of time (some hot Jupiters did this) a year that few Earth days lasts).

Artist’s impression of KELT-9b, a hot Jupiter planet orbiting near its star. Photo credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

As our ability to find smaller planets has grown, we have begun to see a wide variety of types of planets, the smallest of which are even smaller than Mercury. However, as the sample size increases, the strange gap between 1.5 and 2 earth radii remains. For some reason, planets just don’t like being that big.

Previous theories suggested that asteroid bombardment could tear atmospheres off planets of this size, or that some planets could form in regions without enough gas to even create a thick atmosphere, with their overall size well below the “gap”.

The research team, led by Trevor David, approached the puzzle in a new way, considering whether the size had changed over time. Planets tend to form at the same time as their star. So if you know the age of the star, you can estimate the age of the planet. This allowed the team to sort the planets into age groups.

What they found was that older planets (older than 2 billion years) had the gap centered around 1.8 Earth radii, while planets younger than 2 billion years had a size gap closer to 1.6 Earth radii.

Courtesy of the Simons Foundation.

This difference suggests that the smallest mini-Neptunes fail to cling to their atmosphere and shrink to become super-earths pretty early. The same process occurs later with slightly larger mini-Neptunes, which leads to a shift in the “gap”. As Thomas Sumner of the Simons Foundation puts it, the void is therefore best understood as “the gap between the greatest super-earths and the smallest mini-Neptunes that can still maintain their atmosphere”.

What is the cause of this atmospheric shrinkage? This is likely due to radiation from a planet’s star blowing the gas away, or to the residual heat in the planet itself. These processes affect all planets to some extent, but the largest planets have enough gravity to have the effect is nowhere near as dramatic.

Once a puzzle is solved (or at least plausibly explained) there is much more to learn about the details of the process, such as studying how magnetic fields can affect planet size and atmospheric loss.

The paper was published in the Astronomical Journal.

Learn more:

Trevor David et al., “Evolution of Exoplanet Size Distribution: Formation of Great Super-Earths Over Billions of Years.” The Astronomical Journal.

Thomas Sumner, “Shrinking planets could explain the mystery of the universe’s missing worlds,” Simons Foundation.

Selected image source: Aldaron (Wikimedia Commons).

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