Two Billion Year Old Nuclear Reactor

Originally posted by Hanslune
but....the fossil records shows no humans. Lots of other critters but no humans until late late in the age of mammals.

We can detect life back to three billion + years, if they had a civilization similar in its use of materials as we have now, it would be detectable in the sedimentary rock.

Are you talking human or inhuman civilizations? Inhuman would be a lot more plausible

Thanks for the tip on the quoter

The problem with geological dating schemes are that they assume that our environment has been completely stable for billions of years. Thus they assume that carbon 14 production has been stable for this time. In all likelihood this assumption is false. The recurrent successes of catastrophe theory suggest that the only constant is change. Based on the flood account in the Bible it is likely that the earth had a water vapor canopy for quite some time. This may well have changed the rate of carbon 14 production. Also things like flood catastrophes and comet impacts etc. could well have disturbed geological strata. Even the speed of light itself may not be constant. There is some evidence that it has been decaying. Thus I wouldn't trust the 2 billion year old assessment.

Carbon 14 decays at a set and measurable rate and that rate does not change.

Originally posted by grover
Carbon 14 decays at a set and measurable rate and that rate does not change.

Thats correct at least in part. The decay rate is dependent on the value of c. However the rate of carbon 14 production in the upper atmosphere is not necessarily constant. In fact it would depend on quite a few factors, like our sun and our atmosphere.

Originally posted by zysin5
Helium3 is used in reactors and such, and was hoping to find a link to this substance in liquid form in the reactor, tho I couldnt find enough information to properly link the two.. Your thoughts on this Borg?

Could you please elaborate some more on what you're theory is exactly? I like where I think it's going, but I tend to read more into things than I'm supposed to.

TheBorg

reply to post by TheBorg

Edit.
Okay, after reading a few things, I answered my own question, slaps self on the forehead!!! If you want to read this Borg go ahead.. but I think I was way off on my thoughts...

Yes, I didnt know if helium3 would work in the natural process of this reactor, or only used for Man made manufactured nuclar process..

Normal helium has 2 protons and 2 neutrons in its nucleus, giving it an atomic weight of 4.
Now, if you kick out one of neutrons, you get helium-3. This happens once in a while in very energetic nuclear reactors, especially the sun. The sun produces helium by fusing hydrogen atoms together, but about one in every ten thousand helium atoms comes out missing a neutron.

This is naturally happening in the sun.. Does this have any ties to a natural reactor here on earth? And what effects it would have?

sry if that was a bad question, Im still trying to get a grasp on many things here that are comming into the light..
I wasn interested in Helium3 because of how much you will find on the moon, and very little here on earth..
I know that Some He3 is available on Earth. which is a by-product of the maintenance of nuclear weapons,(Prehaps from old reactors like this)?

which would supply us with about 300 kg of He3 and could continue to produce very little each year. The total supply in the U.S. strategic reserves of helium is about 29 kg, and another 187 kg is mixed up with the natural gas we have stored; these sources are not renewable at any significant rate. So we are told...



[edit on 9-9-2007 by zysin5]

www.ocrwm.doe.gov...

Deep under African soil, about 1.7 billion years ago, natural conditions prompted underground nuclear reactions. Scientists from around the world, including American scientists have studied the rocks at Oklo. These scientists believe that water filtering down through crevices in the rock played a key role. Without water, it would have been nearly impossible for natural reactors to sustain chain reactions.

According to that site, water traveling through the rocks caused the neutrons to slow down enough, so that they could collide with other neutrons and cause them to split.The fission reaction would then heat the water to steam and so on. Rinse and repeat.

Now, if there was a "natural" gas turbine found at the site, that would be something...

This may be off topic but this thread got me thinking deep about something. I was thinking "2 Billion years?? Then were did we evolve from" Then i started thinking if there were human like people around 2 billion years ago then maybe apes etc are a mutant form of humans affected by nuclear fall out etc. Infact maybe earlier humans looked completely different were mutated into apes and then evolved into what we call humans today. Then i thought "What if all creatures have been mutated from one type of being over the course of millions of years and many nuclear mutations etc. Could these many Nuclear wipe outs of this planet have affected one type of creature to branch off into literally thousands of different of mutations each time getting worse and worse. As i said it could be off topic but this thread got me thinking that way

I have heard of the "natural" nuclear reactor in Afrika before, but I had never thought of it as anything but an odd chance occurence in nature up until I noticed this thread. But; the more I think about it the more improbable an occurence it seems. Nuclear reactions outside the sun etc. are just assumed to be an extremely artificial/human-made occurence. That geology just "occured" in such a way that nuclear reactions were the result actually seems a bit sketchy to me. that this thing could be the remnants of an ancient design seems as likely as that it is a chance combination of geology - or 50/50 in other words. The officialoid timeline of civilizations given to us by recent historians/geo-archeologists is more than suspect to my mind at present. If we had a look at Chernobyl in 20,000 years what would it look like? It would meld impreceptably with the environment and would be taken for granted as nature in all likeliness.

Is it at all possible we were told this was a "natural" reactor simply because if it was an unnatural reactor it could prove ancient civilisations did exist? It fits in pretty well with the stories of advanced technology in Atlantis and ancient Egypt etc. Although one hundred kilowatts if not a great deal for a nuclear reactor, it in itself could suggest advanced technology given that "devices" of the time were also very advanced and did not require much power to function.

I don t think that disinformation was the goal here, I think that it is a case of genuinely not knowing that the picture is larger. We do not need to attribute such agendas to a population that is more than willing to induce a sense of the smaller image.

Originally posted by NuclearPaul
It fits in pretty well with the stories of advanced technology in Atlantis and ancient Egypt etc.

It still doesn't fit with Plato's story of Atlantis being conquered by the Athenians. Like a previous poster said, even if they had 10,000 Athenians, 1 nucleur bomb and the battle's over.

reply to post by Hyzera


The Atlantis that Plato 'had seen' could have been a small remnant of previously great civilization. already 'dying out'. If said Athenian conquest actually took place, it could have been on a very small scale against a small, probably isolated portion of ancient 'people'. Even that is questionable, as we would see a great qty of Atlantians' tropheys brought back, as it was customary for conquering army.

'question everything..'

how does many really know how long ago something existed or didn't, carbon dating? how about brain washing... hey this carbon stuff works and i find out this is 2 billion years old. come on seriously bunch of crap

Originally posted by Unit541
But perhaps, and maybe just for the sake of our own future as a civilization, we should take a more optimistic perspective on these theories. Maybe these advanced civilizations, be them human or not, didn't destroy themselves. Maybe they just packed up and left when the time came. On to greener pastures as they say. Perhaps one day, we'll do the same.

I know this is an old thread, but I was pointed here from another on a similar(ish) topic...

South Africa; 220k yr old mining operations (possibly)

I just wanted to say (assuming you're still an active member on ATS still) that I was amazed you received no stars for this theory..! I for one find it refreshing and highly interesting.

Isaac Asimov posited the conquest of the galaxies in his Foundation series amongst others, and it might be interesting to see whether any legends regarding this possibility exist. It would have to be legends; we could never hope to find evidence of such a thing. Effectively it would just be a fun exercise of 'what if'...

Also - the focus for the ongoing death and rebirth of civilisation is focused around nuclear holocaust. What if the events weren't carried out using nuclear weaponry? How about some sort of matter/antimatter device, or even H-Bombs? I don't know the science, admittedly, but my imaginative faculties have no issue conceiving of alternatives (in addition to the two named) to the nuclear devastation model.

Hey - if Asimov can do it, so can I.


Noah.

we could never hope to find evidence of such a thing

Depends...in a truly technologically advanced civilization like our a large number of materials would survive until subduction. Disturbance of sedimentary soils would also leave a record that would last for millions of years. a limited list of things that would survive

Glass
Ceramics
Stone items
Certain plastics
Certain refined metals
Cut gems
Modifications to bedrock
Radioactive isotopes
etc


To date nothing like this has been found

this bit about a natural reactor is fascinating

I believe in an ancient off world civilization but 2 billion is a stretch even for me

not saying it didn't happen just to long ago to confirm

Originally posted by liquidself
I have heard of the "natural" nuclear reactor in Afrika before, but I had never thought of it as anything but an odd chance occurence in nature up until I noticed this thread. But; the more I think about it the more improbable an occurence it seems.

However, this "improbability" is only an opinion.

In fact, the existence of natural nuclear "reactors" was predicted by Paul Kuroda - a nuclear chemist - twenty years before this site was discovered:

In 1952, the late Paul Kuroda predicted that if the right conditions existed, a natural nuclear reactor system could go critical. Twenty years later, noticing that uranium ore from the Oklo mine was depleted in 235 Uranium , it was discovered that the site had once been a natural nuclear reaction system.

Source

So, if this is so improbable, what is a nuclear chemist doing predicting the existence of such a thing?

This was certainly a natural reactor. The site is still there and there is no structure that might indicate that a controlled reaction was happening there for the purpose of getting energy.

IOW, there is no power plant remains - just dirt and rock.

Harte

verry interesting. where did you get your information from. im new to ats and am excited to get started

Originally posted by Hanslune
Howdy Dgtempe

Please define 'Modern'

Various early civilization had running water, dentist tools but no electricity (the first sign of that is 660 AD the famous Baghdad batteries.

Do cultures run down then up? Yep The Tasmans are a good example of that as are the Chinese, Arabs and of course the Europeans gave us a good example of cyclical civilization. However at this time there is no evidence of any civilization having come up to 'modern' standards previously. We've been looking for over 130 years and still ....

with 2/3rds of the planet being underwater, i'd say we haven't even BEGUN looking!