Where Has All the Xenon Gone?

LucidBeast writes "Xenon, the second heaviest of the noble gasses, is only found in trace amounts in the atmosphere. Atmosphere contains less xenon than other lighter noble gasses. Missing xenon has perplexed scientists and it has been speculated that it is hiding in the Earth's mantle. Now, a group at the University of Bayreuth in Germany thinks it might have found the answer. It turns out that xenon does not dissolve easily into magnesium silicate perovskite, and thus it cannot hide there. Because it had no place to hide, it is now gone forever."

Comments

Re:"gone"? did it ever exist?

[Logger]

I interpreted the poorly written article to mean. The forming rocks could absorb the other noble gases just fine, but not xenon. I infer this would have left an atmosphere (at the time) that was rich in xenon since very little of it was absorbed into the rock. The article speculated that some form of meteorite collision or solar event blew off the atmosphere. Leaving me to infer that the atmosphere we have today is the result of the rock releasing gas into the atmosphere. Since the rock was xenon poor, today's atmosphere is also xenon poor as a result.