The Earth’s core spews old helium, and scientists still don’t know why. They’re surprised to learn that this ancient isotope — long thought by futurists to be a potentially long-lasting supply of safer-burning nuclear energy — was used to create our own planet. The most surprising aspect of this leak is that it implies that our own Earth formed considerably earlier than previously believed.
The fact that Earth was able to absorb Helium-3 so early in our solar system’s history suggests that our planet originated deep within the sun’s early solar nebula. This turns the prevailing paradigm on its head regarding how close our Earth originated to our young sun, which has long been a point of contention among planetary formation theorists.
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ReportedlyUniversity of New Mexico researchers say in a new paper published in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) publication Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems that this rare isotope of helium gas, Helium-3, formed during the Big Bang and then gradually became integrated into the core of the earth when our planet was formed. The solar nebula existed for only a few million years, according to the paper’s lead author, Peter Olson, a geophysicist at the University of New Mexico.
“As Earth formed, helium-3 and other nebula gases were integrated into it. This suggests that Earth and terrestrial planets formed early in the solar system’s existence.”
According to the researchers, the Earth leaks about 2,000 kg of helium-3 every year, enough to inflate a balloon the size of a typical desk. However, most geoscientists previously thought of our planet’s inner core as a closed system with no mass exchange with the rest of the world. However, Olson claims his new models are based on observations from helium-3 mass spectrometers of volcanic basalts in Iceland and Hawaii.