Slashdot Mirror
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.
It'll be found in a country that by coincidence is in need of liberating.
...is xenophobic, what hope does mankind have?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
..but somehow we lack a strategic bacon reserve. I think bacon really should have the priority there.
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!
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.
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.