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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."
Found it! It was in the couch.
This will make the Xenonphobes happy.
Canada has a Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
It'll be found in a country that by coincidence is in need of liberating.
Problem is, the U.S. is getting out of the rare gas business:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/11/AR2010101104496.html
So one can't even convincingly joke about it.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I'm confused: did it go out into upper atmosphere or space like helium (seems unlikely @~10x weight of nitrogen & oxygen), did alchemists turn it into gold or did we overestimate the amount there initially was? not seeing how the "conservation of mass" loop is being closed here...
TFS makes no sense at all; TFA is not much better. It seems that, rather than asking, "Why is there so little xenon in the atmosphere" and coming up with a purely speculative answer, the researchers might have questioned why anyone expected to find more.
...is xenophobic, what hope does mankind have?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
RTFA. It says that it was probably in the early earth's atmosphere, and the earth's atmosphere was probably blown away by some event, and then re-established itself xenon-free from gasses bubbling up from the molten landscape.
They also wonder why Mars has no xenon.
Free Martian Whores!
"Xenon, the second heaviest of the noble gasses, is only found in trace amounts in the atmosphere.
So far so good.
[The] [a]tmosphere contains less xenon than other lighter noble gasses.
Could be read as meaning that the other noble gasses contain more xenon than the atmosphere, but as a sentence it's passable.
...it is hiding in the earths mantle.
It's called [the] Earth, and you forgot the possesive apostrophe.
Now a group at the University of Bayreuth in Germany think that they might have found the answer.
"The answer," given the context, can only seem to mean that they've found out where the xenon is hiding, but...
I[t] turns out that xenon does not dissolve easily into magnesium silicate perovskite, thus it cannot hide there. And because it had no place to hide, it is now gone forever."
Oh, okay, so "the answer" seems to be "we still don't know, but it's not where we thought it was"? Rather than "it is now gone forever" it seems (from reading one of articles, shock horror) that it was never actually there in the first place - perhaps substituting "come from" in place of "hide" would have made more sense.
Yours sincerely,
Captain Pedantic
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
Actually pretty close. A bunch went into display/effects laser systems in the 1990s, before cheap diode lasers because available in a variety of colours. If you ever saw non-red/non-green lasers at shows in the 1990s, they were either YAG (different tech altogether), or Argon/Neon/Krypton/Xenon blends for different colours. Now they're pretty much all solid-state, and cost $500 instead of around $100k.
I was confused as hell, but here is what I've gleaned:
1. Most noble gases were dissolved in/embedded in the early Earth's rock.
2. Xenon due to a variety of factors, did not behave in a similar manner, and thus was free floating in the early atmosphere.
3. A 'big event', like the event that caused Earth's moon to form also knocked the original atmosphere into space.
4. Because almost all of the xenon was in the atmosphere at the time of the event, it was literally lost (from the perspective of the Earth) to space and was either acquired by the other planets or sun, or blown by the solar wind out to the edge of the solar system and beyond.
5. Some small amounts of xenon were recaptured by Earth (like how the bits that formed the moon are still 'bound' to Earth) and those small amounts are what we measure in our current atmosphere.
In short:
Xenon exists in the atmosphere, not rocks. Impact event knocks off Earth's atmosphere (and the Xenon), Earth's atmosphere is replaced by outgassing from the previously saturated rock. The rock did not contain Xenon, so we have only trace amounts today.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Xenon is in QUALITY headlights. the blue and purple crap the posers put on their cars is not Xenon but actually low grade halogen bulbs with a color coating on them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas_compound
Yes, see the link: of all the noble gases we've studied, it is the most chemically active, we've created many more compounds with xenon than any other noble gas. It's the most reactive.
Radon is heavier and has more complex electron shells and therefore is probably more reactive, theoretically. But it is also radioactive, so it isn't more chemically active when we take into account the concept the idea of sticking around and staying in the compound.
So xenon is the most chemically active noble gas, period.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Which coincides nicely with the planetary impact hypothesis for the Moon's origin.
"Xenon headlights are a hazard, especially to older drivers."
⦠because drivers can see seniors on sidewalks sooner and have a better chance of hitting them for points?
@de_machina
Because the a-hat tailgating you in a lifted truck with xenon headlights ruins your nightvision.
Is this issue really the bulbs, or is it the asshole, the truck, or the tailgating ? My preference if someone is really close and trying to blind me is to turn my lights off, and let them light the road for me. Of course, this wouldnt be safe, so I keep coasting to a slower and safer speed. Eventually the asshole figures it out.
Sure, if you like replacing your headlights 1-2 times a year. That makes them even more expensive by comparison.
Of course, by insisting on getting out of it ASAP, they're driving prices down so they don't get a return on the investment and they are driving wasteful use of a finite resource. The only way they could be any dumber about their market exit would be if they just opened the valves and walked away.