A couple of days ago, I posted some musings about the amount of uranium available on the earth. One of the Atomic Insights blog readers responded with a link to an interesting paper titled “How much Uranium is in the Earth? Predictions for geo-neutrinos at KamLAND”.
Okay, I will admit that the paper is a bit dense and academic, but the question is really cool! I cannot wait until the punch line can be delivered, but apparently the measurements of anti-neutrinos requires a good deal of patient observation over a number of years in order to filter out the associated “noise” from the background.
It is interesting to note, however that the paper does place the currently accepted lower limit of total uranium mass on Earth at 0.8 x 10^17 kilograms – truly a massive quantity – and indicates that it could be twice that number.
Update: (posted on 1-11-2007 at 19:38) The formerly anonymous reader who provided the link described above is has indicated that it is okay to post his name – Graham Cowan. You can find out more about Graham at BORON: A BETTER ENERGY CARRIER THAN HYDROGEN?.
