This is a really hypothetical question, and I mean *really* hypothetical.
Suppose there is a large planetary body orbiting the Sun really far out, way beyond Pluto. I know recently astronomers have discovered at least 2 or 3 such objects way outside the fringes of our known solar system.
Now, suppose these bodies were captured by the Sun at some point in the distant past, when they circled much closer to a parent star. If an expedition from Earth was to land on such a far orbiting planet and managed to set up a mining colony there, what are the chances that such a body would harbor deposits of uranium underneath its surface ice?
Okay, let's assume there *is* such an abundance of uranium there. My question now is: since uranium is the heaviest naturally occurring element of all, can it be said that anything between it and hydrogen - the lightest element - would be feasible for mining on such a planet?
In other words, if the geological conditions were ripe for uranium to have been synthesised in the rocks, then does that imply that technically *any* of the lighter metals such as tin, silver, platinum, gold, aluminium, etc. could also easily have formed there too?
Is that going to be a sensible argument?
Thanks for any thoughts on this wild wild speculation.... :shock:
The energy it would take to get there, stop, load up, and then get moving again back to Earth and stop again would make it rather impractical. Pluto is quite far away.
Naturally occurring is a kind of tricky phrase. Elements heavier than Iron don't occur by energy releasing fusion in stars, but result from nifty exploding stars that force extra particles into the nucleus's at the expense of energy- which is why they are fissionable and can release energy. If there are elements heavier than Iron in the rock, that would probably indicate that there would be an assortment of heavier than iron elements there- seeing as many of these elements are radioactive and decay into each other anyway- though that wouldn't necessarily imply that you would have available all manner of lighter elements- especially things like hydrogen which have a very low escape velocity because of their mass and don't tend to stick around planets (there isn't even much Hydrogen in Earth's atmosphere because it escapes). You probably wouldn't have much luck finding any of the lighter gases, and of course there's no guarantee that there would be an appreciable amount of any of the heavier elements either- for the most part you'd have to be lucky.
In other words, if the geological conditions were ripe for uranium to have been synthesised in the rocks, then does that imply that technically *any* of the lighter metals such as tin, silver, platinum, gold, aluminium, etc. could also easily have formed there too?
No, not really- uranium is a fundamental element- it is not synthesized by geologic processes. These elements are all produced in stars by fusion reactions. Of course, some of those, like aluminum, are so universally common that they would probably be there- just not pure. Much of the Earth's crust is made out of aluminum, but because it's very reactive it's typically bound with assorted compounds I can't be bothered to list. In order to get pure aluminum one must dissolve the compounds and perform electrolysis on the solution and collect the metal from either the anode or cathode (can't remember which).
Anyway, even if you did find a massive amount of pure platinum there, the cost of going there and dragging it back to Earth would pretty much eliminate any possible profit you could make by selling the platinum or uranium or what have you.
The expedition isn't going there to mine, for returning commodities back to Earth. The mining is an incidental activity for a colony ship on a one way ticket to Alpha Centauri!
So, technically speaking, if element number 92 (uranium) has been discovered on a such a captured planet orbiting way outside our known solar system, then that implies the existence of other metallic elements like iron, tin, copper, lead, gold, etc. is possible to be found there, right?
Since uranium (and elements higher than iron on the periodic table) are synthesised out of stars going through supernova explosions, then the likelihood is that virtually any heavy element ought to be present there...
So if the crew are going to land on such a planet solely on the strength of having discovered a large deposit of sub-surface uranium, they might as well land there with some metal mining equipment too.
I think you'll find that any planet which has plate tectonics will have similar metal assemblages to Earth. However, if a planet hasn't undergone plate tectonics there will be a more limited amount of metals available.
Let's assume a rocky planet which has a core, mantle and crust.
Elements are spread roughly evenly when a planet first forms. They then "group together" during formation due to different densities. Heavier elements a concentrated in the core, light one in the crust.
However, the accumulation of minable deposits occur due to geologic processes. On Earth this is down to plate tectonics. On Io, it's due to gravitational forces. The planet needs to be active (or was once active) in order to cause the clumping together of elements to form ore deposits.
So if uranium deposits were found, then the planet was probably active, so it's sensible to asume that other ores were formed. This isn't always true, for example Io will have large sulphur deposits, but not much else (probably!). But it's reasonable to me anyway.
Having Uranium wouldn't imply that it had all of those others, but there's a good chance you would have a large amount of Iron (the end product of stars), and I would be astonished if you didn't have some lead.
If the heavier elements did exist there, chances are it would be radioactive and thus have a molten core at some level, or at least would have had one at one point (albeit its distance from the sun makes the specifics debatable).
If it was too small, it may have cooled before all of those spiffy separating forces acted on it, and aside, if it was small the gravitational force of the planet wouldn't be enough for sufficient mass separation of the elements anyway in such a time span.
I'm not sure how much upon mass separation geologic element coagulation relies, but it's the only method I know aside from precipitation into a crystallized form that can separate out elements like that.
If the body was fairly large, it could have probably maintained a molten state, would probably have a crust, and chances are you'd be able to find isolated elements there still- what elements I know not.
Then again, if it was that large we probably would have been able to spot it with a telescope by now. I'm thinking your smaller bodies are probably going to have cooled too fast to have their elements separated out like you want.
Okay, it's only fiction after all... but I wanted to keep the science as accurate as possible.
The planet is actually quite small (a 'planetoid'), about the size of Earth's moon in mass (roughly 7 x 10^22 kilograms) and diameter (roughly 2,000 miles). It has been *captured* from interstellar space by the Sun's gravity during our Solar System's early history.
It was orbiting close to a parent star, on the outer fringes of globular cluster M15, until it was stripped off that system due to a violent encounter with a Black Hole billions of years ago...
There's an image of its red surface before that violent encounter here:
Now, these colonists from Earth had the good fortune to intercept it on their way to Alpha Centauri. I haven't finished the book yet.... but thanks for all the answers!
Hey, you aren't a half bad writer- that's pretty well written. One suggestion though: if you do publish these, please do get professional cover art for the books. No matter how bad it is to judge a book by its cover, people do. If you can't afford a graphic design company, I can probably hook you up with somebody pretty cheap for sake of giving a decent book a cover it deserves (expect to spend at least 50 USD like 25 L last I checked- on good covers though).
My manuscript is with the publishers as I write, I hope they will like my story. They let me publish my first book, so I am optimistic they will allow this to go to press too. It's a continuation of an epic 50,000 year long adventure... and naturally, my readers need to know what happens next.
Just a point after Gus' comment - agree about plate tectonics, but don't forget that for the Earth's size we are laden with metal and heavy elements as a result of the Mars sized impact event that formed the earth and moon - the moon is mainly composed of the earths former 'silicate skin' - and is deficiant in heavy elements - ie. metal - compared to the 'average' whereas the earth is opposite...
I do wonder if that lends more support to the theory that many exotic metals and minerals would be found on outlying bodies of our Solar System in places like the Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud.
Another moot point, if you did find and brought back uranium, platinum or whatever, wouldn't the prices of uranium etc drop? i mean, things tend to be expensive if they are rare. so if a 10km diameter lump of platinum arrived, wouldn't prices drop? :?
erm I realise that this is now a moot point as the manuscript has been accepted and everything but what's the motivation for mining on this planet?
1. To sell the material on arrival at Alpha Centauri
2. To sell the mineral on earth
3. To utilise the material on the colony at Alpha Centauri.
Hi,
It's none of these. The main reason why the colonists take a trip down to that ice world found in the Oort cloud is actually to pick up additional 'uranium' fuel. That is what powers all the lighting, heating and biosphere life support inside the ark to keep its environment natural and 'earth-like'.
The metals happen to be a surprise and opportunistic find on top, which they mine to replenish hardware losses accumulating across the millennia.
A 50,000 year long voyage that involves launching metal-rich navigation platforms from the ark which serve as trailblazers ahead of the mission. This page has some details:
Rank: Talc
Joined: 09/02/2006
Points: 11
The energy it would take to get there, stop, load up, and then get moving again back to Earth and stop again would make it rather impractical. Pluto is quite far away.
Naturally occurring is a kind of tricky phrase. Elements heavier than Iron don't occur by energy releasing fusion in stars, but result from nifty exploding stars that force extra particles into the nucleus's at the expense of energy- which is why they are fissionable and can release energy. If there are elements heavier than Iron in the rock, that would probably indicate that there would be an assortment of heavier than iron elements there- seeing as many of these elements are radioactive and decay into each other anyway- though that wouldn't necessarily imply that you would have available all manner of lighter elements- especially things like hydrogen which have a very low escape velocity because of their mass and don't tend to stick around planets (there isn't even much Hydrogen in Earth's atmosphere because it escapes). You probably wouldn't have much luck finding any of the lighter gases, and of course there's no guarantee that there would be an appreciable amount of any of the heavier elements either- for the most part you'd have to be lucky.
In other words, if the geological conditions were ripe for uranium to have been synthesised in the rocks, then does that imply that technically *any* of the lighter metals such as tin, silver, platinum, gold, aluminium, etc. could also easily have formed there too?
No, not really- uranium is a fundamental element- it is not synthesized by geologic processes. These elements are all produced in stars by fusion reactions. Of course, some of those, like aluminum, are so universally common that they would probably be there- just not pure. Much of the Earth's crust is made out of aluminum, but because it's very reactive it's typically bound with assorted compounds I can't be bothered to list. In order to get pure aluminum one must dissolve the compounds and perform electrolysis on the solution and collect the metal from either the anode or cathode (can't remember which).
Anyway, even if you did find a massive amount of pure platinum there, the cost of going there and dragging it back to Earth would pretty much eliminate any possible profit you could make by selling the platinum or uranium or what have you.
Rank: Talc
Joined: 05/02/2006
Points: 9
The expedition isn't going there to mine, for returning commodities back to Earth. The mining is an incidental activity for a colony ship on a one way ticket to Alpha Centauri!
So, technically speaking, if element number 92 (uranium) has been discovered on a such a captured planet orbiting way outside our known solar system, then that implies the existence of other metallic elements like iron, tin, copper, lead, gold, etc. is possible to be found there, right?
Since uranium (and elements higher than iron on the periodic table) are synthesised out of stars going through supernova explosions, then the likelihood is that virtually any heavy element ought to be present there...
So if the crew are going to land on such a planet solely on the strength of having discovered a large deposit of sub-surface uranium, they might as well land there with some metal mining equipment too.
Would you agree with the rationale, there?
Rank: Apatite
Joined: 02/08/2005
Points: 906
I think you'll find that any planet which has plate tectonics will have similar metal assemblages to Earth. However, if a planet hasn't undergone plate tectonics there will be a more limited amount of metals available.
Gus
Rank: Topaz
Joined: 18/12/2006
Points: 2977
Let's take a step back and look again at this...
Let's assume a rocky planet which has a core, mantle and crust.
Elements are spread roughly evenly when a planet first forms. They then "group together" during formation due to different densities. Heavier elements a concentrated in the core, light one in the crust.
However, the accumulation of minable deposits occur due to geologic processes. On Earth this is down to plate tectonics. On Io, it's due to gravitational forces. The planet needs to be active (or was once active) in order to cause the clumping together of elements to form ore deposits.
So if uranium deposits were found, then the planet was probably active, so it's sensible to asume that other ores were formed. This isn't always true, for example Io will have large sulphur deposits, but not much else (probably!). But it's reasonable to me anyway.
Does this rambling make enough sense?
Jon
Geologists are gneiss!!
Rank: Talc
Joined: 09/02/2006
Points: 11
Having Uranium wouldn't imply that it had all of those others, but there's a good chance you would have a large amount of Iron (the end product of stars), and I would be astonished if you didn't have some lead.
If the heavier elements did exist there, chances are it would be radioactive and thus have a molten core at some level, or at least would have had one at one point (albeit its distance from the sun makes the specifics debatable).
If it was too small, it may have cooled before all of those spiffy separating forces acted on it, and aside, if it was small the gravitational force of the planet wouldn't be enough for sufficient mass separation of the elements anyway in such a time span.
I'm not sure how much upon mass separation geologic element coagulation relies, but it's the only method I know aside from precipitation into a crystallized form that can separate out elements like that.
If the body was fairly large, it could have probably maintained a molten state, would probably have a crust, and chances are you'd be able to find isolated elements there still- what elements I know not.
Then again, if it was that large we probably would have been able to spot it with a telescope by now. I'm thinking your smaller bodies are probably going to have cooled too fast to have their elements separated out like you want.
You may be able to use phyto-mining though, heh'
Rank: Talc
Joined: 05/02/2006
Points: 9
Okay, it's only fiction after all... but I wanted to keep the science as accurate as possible.
The planet is actually quite small (a 'planetoid'), about the size of Earth's moon in mass (roughly 7 x 10^22 kilograms) and diameter (roughly 2,000 miles). It has been *captured* from interstellar space by the Sun's gravity during our Solar System's early history.
It was orbiting close to a parent star, on the outer fringes of globular cluster M15, until it was stripped off that system due to a violent encounter with a Black Hole billions of years ago...
There's an image of its red surface before that violent encounter here:
http://www.astroscience.org/Books/truepriceofimmortality.htm
Now, these colonists from Earth had the good fortune to intercept it on their way to Alpha Centauri. I haven't finished the book yet.... but thanks for all the answers!
Rank: Talc
Joined: 09/02/2006
Points: 11
Hey, you aren't a half bad writer- that's pretty well written. One suggestion though: if you do publish these, please do get professional cover art for the books. No matter how bad it is to judge a book by its cover, people do. If you can't afford a graphic design company, I can probably hook you up with somebody pretty cheap for sake of giving a decent book a cover it deserves (expect to spend at least 50 USD like 25 L last I checked- on good covers though).
Best of luck,
-Blake
Rank: Talc
Joined: 05/02/2006
Points: 9
Thanks.
My manuscript is with the publishers as I write, I hope they will like my story. They let me publish my first book, so I am optimistic they will allow this to go to press too. It's a continuation of an epic 50,000 year long adventure... and naturally, my readers need to know what happens next.
Rank: Talc
Joined: 05/02/2006
Points: 9
Hi,
I forgot all about this discussion, since I went away writing.
Just wanted to let everyone here know my novel is going to be out on August 8th:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1424138337/sr=1-5/qid=1153421631/ref=sr...
Thanks to all for your input,
AA
http://www.myspace.com/aa_spaceagent
Rank: Topaz
Joined: 18/12/2006
Points: 2977
Cool! Might have to buy that!
J.
Geologists are gneiss!!
Rank: Fluorite
Joined: 25/06/2004
Points: 447
Just a point after Gus' comment - agree about plate tectonics, but don't forget that for the Earth's size we are laden with metal and heavy elements as a result of the Mars sized impact event that formed the earth and moon - the moon is mainly composed of the earths former 'silicate skin' - and is deficiant in heavy elements - ie. metal - compared to the 'average' whereas the earth is opposite...
Cheers
www.bgs.ac.uk
www.mdsg.org.uk
www.le.ac.uk/geology
www.geolsoc.org.uk
www.ex.ac.uk/csm
Did you know that the name Cyprus is derived from the greek/latin for copper? or vice versa.....
Rank: Apatite
Joined: 20/11/2004
Points: 688
Get Starship Enterprise and Capt Kirk and you can bring back anything!
John
Civilisation exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
Will Durant
Rank: Talc
Joined: 05/02/2006
Points: 9
Interesting article here that speculates on black diamonds coming from interstellar space:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0701/12diamonds/
I do wonder if that lends more support to the theory that many exotic metals and minerals would be found on outlying bodies of our Solar System in places like the Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud.
AA
http://www.myspace.com/aa_spaceagent
Rank: Gypsum
Joined: 14/09/2006
Points: 54
erm I realise that this is now a moot point as the manuscript has been accepted and everything but what's the motivation for mining on this planet?
1. To sell the material on arrival at Alpha Centauri
2. To sell the mineral on earth
3. To utilise the material on the colony at Alpha Centauri.
Reason 1 I understand. Reason 2 I also understand but the crew are going the wrong way.
Reason 3 is the iffy one. Wouldn't they be better mining on the planet they intend to colonise? Then they have easy access to the materials they need.
Rank: Fluorite
Joined: 14/09/2006
Points: 254
Another moot point, if you did find and brought back uranium, platinum or whatever, wouldn't the prices of uranium etc drop? i mean, things tend to be expensive if they are rare. so if a 10km diameter lump of platinum arrived, wouldn't prices drop? :?
Rank: Talc
Joined: 05/02/2006
Points: 9
erm I realise that this is now a moot point as the manuscript has been accepted and everything but what's the motivation for mining on this planet?
1. To sell the material on arrival at Alpha Centauri
2. To sell the mineral on earth
3. To utilise the material on the colony at Alpha Centauri.
Hi,
It's none of these. The main reason why the colonists take a trip down to that ice world found in the Oort cloud is actually to pick up additional 'uranium' fuel. That is what powers all the lighting, heating and biosphere life support inside the ark to keep its environment natural and 'earth-like'.
The metals happen to be a surprise and opportunistic find on top, which they mine to replenish hardware losses accumulating across the millennia.
A 50,000 year long voyage that involves launching metal-rich navigation platforms from the ark which serve as trailblazers ahead of the mission. This page has some details:
http://www.astroscience.org/abdul-ahad/firstarktoalphacentauri/FAQ.htm
The rest is explained in the two books.
cheers,
AA
http://www.myspace.com/aa_spaceagent