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To: SunkenCiv

If intense radiation can strip H2 of a neutron, would this not affect the detected ratios in comets?


17 posted on 12/11/2014 10:05:40 AM PST by going hot (Happiness is a momma deuce)
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To: going hot

Nope. :’)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium

Deuterium (symbol D or 2H, also known as heavy hydrogen) is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen. The nucleus of deuterium, called a deuteron, contains one proton and one neutron, whereas the far more common hydrogen isotope, protium, has no neutron in the nucleus... deuterium accounts for approximately 0.0156% (or on a mass basis: 0.0312%) of all the naturally occurring hydrogen in the oceans... Because deuterium is destroyed in the interiors of stars faster than it is produced, and because other natural processes are thought to produce only an insignificant amount of deuterium, it is thought that nearly all deuterium found in nature was produced in the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, and that the basic or primordial ratio of hydrogen-1 (protium) to deuterium (about 26 atoms of deuterium per million hydrogen atoms) has its origin from that time. This is the ratio found in the gas giant planets, such as Jupiter. However, different astronomical bodies are found to have different ratios of deuterium to hydrogen-1, and this is thought to be as a result of natural isotope separation processes that occur from solar heating of ices in comets. Like the water-cycle in Earth’s weather, such heating processes may enrich deuterium with respect to protium. In fact, the discovery of deuterium/protium ratios in a number of comets very similar to the mean ratio in Earth’s oceans (156 atoms of deuterium per million hydrogens) has led to theories that much of Earth’s ocean water has a cometary origin.


18 posted on 12/11/2014 10:34:29 AM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______________________Celebrate the Polls, Ignore the Trolls)
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