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.
- S. Mostefaoui, G. W. Lugmair, and P. Hoppe, “60Fe: A Heat Source for Planetary Differentiation from a Nearby Supernova Explosion,” Astrophysical Journal 625 (2005): 271-77.
- https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJ/v625n1/61582/brief/61582.abstract.html
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