Of course, none of these people are geophysicists.
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Hi John,
That seems like an odd thing to say ....or are you just refering to the ORNL & AECL people ? ......surely you don't expect to find "nuclear geologists" ? ....that's what I meant by "interdisciplinary."
Otherwise, the other people mentioned in the article obviously include geologists -- for example David Deming, associate professor of geology and geophysics, Hatten Yoder, director emeritus of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, etc.
As for the articles on Venus and Mars, its odd that for Mars they say that "The dynamo theory of planetary magnetism indicates that Mars may have had a dipole moment of about one-tenth of Earth's when it was first formed..... The rotation rate Of Mars is approximately that of Earth and is thus sufficient for the operation of this initial dynamo. "
.....but for Venus, they claim that "It is important to note that, contrary to popular belief, dynamo theory does not credit the smallness of the magnetic moment to the slow rotation of Venus (a Venus day of ~ 243 Earth days is almost equal to the length of its year of ~ 224 days, and its sense of rotation is retrograde)."
WHICH IS RIGHT ? Maybe it takes BOTH an energy (heat) source AND a certain minimum rotation rate ? (another interesting case is that of Uranus, whose magnetic field is perpendicular to its axis of rotation -- some say its on its way to reversing polarity....)
Thanks,
Jaro
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One question that I would ask is why do Venus http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/papers/venus_mag/ and Mars http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/papers/mars_mag/ have magnet fields so different from the Earth. Yet the masses of the Earth and Venus are about the same, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/venusfact.html but the differences in the of Mars and the Earth are about the same. http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html
"Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@AECL.CA> wrote:
FYI, from another list....
( I got to have a little bit of input on this one -- altogether a well researched & written article, IMO....)
Jaro
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-----Original Message-----
Sent: Friday March 28, 2003 10:57 AM
To: cdn-nucl-l@informer2.cis.McMaster.CA
Subject: [cdn-nucl-l] Re: giant natural nuclear reactor at the center of the Earth
Here's an interesting article that quotes, among others, both ORNL and
AECL scientists...
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030327-042137-9414r
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