RE: Conceptual helium study24 Feb 2024 09:45
Just in case anyone is not suitably in awe of what Lorna and her team are achieving, a little bit of science on the subject - waaaaay beyond me btw:
"4Helium production within the Earth’s crust is primarily controlled by the radioactive decay of 235/238U isotopes of uranium and 232Th isotope of thorium and their daughter isotopes, via αparticles. The helium concentration in any rock or mineral is dependant primarily on the radioelement concentration and the age of that rock or mineral (Ballentine and Burnard 2002).
The 4He production rate from each radioisotope, R is given by:
4He (atoms g-1 yr-1) = Xr [R] (NA/Ar) × 10-6 (eλt - 1) × yieldr (Equation 1)
Where: Xr = fractional natural abundance of isotope R
NA = Avogadro’s number (6.023 × 1023)
Ar = molar mass of R (g)
λr = decay constant of R (yr-1)
yieldr = number of α particles emitted in the complete decay chain
[R] = the concentration of R in ppm
t = age (yr).
Decay of 238U, 235U and 232Th: λ238 = 1.55 × 10-10, λ235 = 9.85 × 10-10, λ232 = 4.95 × 10-11 (Steiger and Jäger, 1977) yield 8, 7 and 6 α particles respectively. The normalised natural abundance of U gives X238 = 0.9928 and X235 = 0.0072.
Hence, the number of atoms of 4He produced in 1 gram of rock per year becomes:
4He atoms g-1 yr-1 = (3.115 × 106
+ 1.272 × 105
) [U] + 7.710 × 105
[Th] (Equation 2)
This formula allows the maximum volume of 4He generated within the rock units to be
calculated...
Think we should just leave them to it, have faith and patience and be very grateful that "generational wealth for investors" is also on her mind :)