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In 1972, Scientists Discovered a Two Billion-Year-Old Nuclear Reactor In Gabon
- dang 11y agoUrl changed from http://www.iafrikan.com/2015/11/02/did-you-hear-about-how-scientists-discovered-a-two-billion-year-old-nuclear-reactor-in-west-africa/ http://www.iafrikan.com/2015/11/02/did-you-hear-about-how-sc..., which points to this.
- tefo-mohapi 11y agoHi dang, the iAfrikan version is re-published, updated and edited with permission.
- dang 11y agoThe site guidelines ask for original sources. But we'll make an exception in this case.
- tefo-mohapi 11y agoTa
- InclinedPlane 11y agoOne interesting thing about this is that it represents a race, between the concentration of Uranium in high-grade ores through geological processes (which requires the Earth to have formed, and so on and so on) on the one hand and the reduction in abundance of U-235 in natural Uranium over time due to radioactive decay.
- legulere 11y ago> The one exception was a shallow reactor zone at a place called Bangombé, some 30 kilometres from Oklo, although this has largely been washed out by ground water. That doesn't sound that safe to me after all.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoSteven Baxter’s ”Manifold: Space“ features one of these in a sort of Planet of the Apes scenario. Great book. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold:_Space https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold:_Space
- AnAfrican 11y agoAs a side-note, it's always weird to me to see place like Gabon or Congo called "West Africa". It's clearly on the West Coast but within Africa, the West starts after Cameroon.
- the_watcher 11y agoJust curious, but what would the accurate geographic descriptor of a west coastal, but not on the western subcontinent be called? The Congo is generally called central Africa in my experience, but that wouldn't really be accurate for Gabon/Angola, would it?
- AnAfrican 11y agoIt would be accurate for Gabon and debatable (but not inaccurate) for Angola. Basically, we think about these blocks: - West Africa - North Africa - East Africa - Southern Africa - Central Africa Now some countries are "on the border" and the description depends more on cultural or economical ties than pure geography. Angola could be southern or Central. Zambia could be eastern or central (or even southern) Uganda could be eastern or central. It's complicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union#Role_of_Regional_Economic_Communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union#Role_of_Regional... But Gabon is definitely Central Africa.
- giarc 11y agoIt would be like someone calling Orlando, western USA. It's on a west coast, and if you were to head west you would likely hit Mexico (maybe Texas...) but it's obviously not western USA.
- dj-wonk 11y ago> Davis and co point out that the Oklo data can also constrain changes in other constants, such as the ratio of light quark masses to the proton mass. To date, this work is consistent with these constants being constant. In the history of science, how many 'constants' have, so far, been shown not to be constant?
- itp 11y agoNot to my knowledge. It's not an idle question, though -- the suggestion that physical constants might have changed over time arose not arbitrarily, but as a result of work in theoretical physics (Dirac's large number hypothesis, as well as a number of models that predict non-constant constants). Remember that just over a hundred years ago one might equally well have asked "in the history of science, how many things have been shown to have constant velocity in all reference frames?"
- Retric 11y agoDepends on what you mean. There have been a lot of implicit constants that change, F = (k) * MA. So, saying constant changes really just means there is another term in the equation that people are ignoring and lumping in with some constant.
- qubex 11y agoIt sounds specious but some ‘parameters’ are sometimes taken to be constant and then turn out to vary in relation to other parameters (such as time). This distinction between what we ”take to be” constant and that which is stringently and formally defined as being a specific value is a vast cognitive chasm.
- cozzyd 11y agoThe fine structure "constant," mentioned in the article actually varies with energy scale (although that's not the concern in the article).
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoCould you explain what you mean here? I can't tell what you're referring to.
- notdonspaulding 11y agoFWIW, the title on this post scans like the number 28 as opposed to the number 2 billion (to my eye, anyway).
- hammock 11y agoYes, unfortunately the title was changed automatically by an HN title parser upon submission. It changes references of million to M and billion to B.
- DanBC 11y agoBut it didn't change your most recent submission? Isn't this just someone trying to fit in the 80 char limit? Current title is 80 chars, so there's not enough room for the illion.
- hammock 11y agoIt did change it, that's how I noticed in the first place. In my case I went back and re-edited the title and that seemed to make it stick to "million" instead of "M."
- BuildTheRobots 11y agoMy brain accepted 2B but then assumed it was a model of reactor. The idea of it being billions of years old didn't even enter :(
- the_watcher 11y agoThis is simply astounding.
- fit2rule 11y agoYes, it truly is. Like, a real wonder of the nature of the universe.
- yarou 11y agoWhat's truly amazing is the emergent properties of nature that lead to natural structures such as this. It makes me wonder if we can create cellular automata made from materials at a nano-scale to mimic this process. Then you're one step away from a Von-Neumann Universal Constructor.
- Torgo 11y agoI don't necessarily want to start a giant derail here, but this thing has some social significance in that it resuscitated some pseudo-scientific claims about advanced ancient human civilizations ala Atlantis, that suffered cataclysm and disappeared from history.
- crpatino 11y agoNot human civilizations. 2 billion years is a lot of time... but it might be weak evidence that we are not the first technological species in this planet. If you consider that we are probably not the only intelligent species on the planet just now, it sounds at least plausible to me.
- Torgo 11y agoSure, pseudoscience has unlimited explanations :-) I've also heard it explained as the engine from a crashed alien spaceship.
- jgome 11y agoI always wondered if this ever happened naturally... Guess I now haev a confirmation. Nice... I suppose.