Iron-60 Heat Source for Interior Differentiation

Iron-60 Heat Source for Interior Differentiation

TNRTB Archive – Retained for reference information

Researchers have discovered more evidence for how the input of metals from a particular supernova eruption has benefited advanced life on Earth. The team of German astrochemists and American oceanographers found an unusually high abundance of nickel-60 for a sample of chondritic meteorites. Such an excess is attributable to the radiometric decay of iron-60. This high abundance of iron-60 for the primordial solar system implies that the solar system formed at the same time and in the same vicinity as the eruption of a Type II supernova. Such a well-timed and well-placed Type II supernova eruption would have injected many advanced-life-critical elements into the solar system—not too many to prove poisonous and not too few to prove a nutrient lack. The injection of the just-right amount of iron-60 also would have provided the interior of the newly formed Earth with the necessary heat to differentiate it into the types of layers that are critical for the long-term support of the plate tectonics and magnetic field that advanced life requires. The degree of fine-tuning in the location, timing, and intensity of the Type II supernova eruption to make advanced life possible on Earth by itself argues for a supernatural, superintelligent Creator. The fact that no iron-60 (half-life = 1.5 million years) can be found today either in the Earth or in meteorites provides yet another argument against young-earth creationism.