TY - JOUR
T1 - Abundance of live 244Pu in deep-sea reservoirs on Earth points to rarity of actinide nucleosynthesis
AU - Wallner, A.
AU - Faestermann, T.
AU - Feige, J.
AU - Feldstein, C.
AU - Knie, K.
AU - Korschinek, G.
AU - Kutschera, W.
AU - Ofan, A.
AU - Paul, M.
AU - Quinto, F.
AU - Rugel, G.
AU - Steier, P.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/1/20
Y1 - 2015/1/20
N2 - Half of the heavy elements including all actinides are produced in r-process nucleosynthesis, whose sites and history remain a mystery. If continuously produced, the Interstellar Medium is expected to build-up a quasi-steady state of abundances of short-lived nuclides (with half-lives ≤100 My), including actinides produced in r-process nucleosynthesis. Their existence in today's interstellar medium would serve as a radioactive clock and would establish that their production was recent. In particular 244Pu, a radioactive actinide nuclide (half-life=81 My), can place strong constraints on recent r-process frequency and production yield. Here we report the detection of live interstellar 244Pu, archived in Earth's deep-sea floor during the last 25 My, at abundances lower than expected from continuous production in the Galaxy by about 2 orders of magnitude. This large discrepancy may signal a rarity of actinide r-process nucleosynthesis sites, compatible with neutron-star mergers or with a small subset of actinide-producing supernovae.
AB - Half of the heavy elements including all actinides are produced in r-process nucleosynthesis, whose sites and history remain a mystery. If continuously produced, the Interstellar Medium is expected to build-up a quasi-steady state of abundances of short-lived nuclides (with half-lives ≤100 My), including actinides produced in r-process nucleosynthesis. Their existence in today's interstellar medium would serve as a radioactive clock and would establish that their production was recent. In particular 244Pu, a radioactive actinide nuclide (half-life=81 My), can place strong constraints on recent r-process frequency and production yield. Here we report the detection of live interstellar 244Pu, archived in Earth's deep-sea floor during the last 25 My, at abundances lower than expected from continuous production in the Galaxy by about 2 orders of magnitude. This large discrepancy may signal a rarity of actinide r-process nucleosynthesis sites, compatible with neutron-star mergers or with a small subset of actinide-producing supernovae.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84943583982&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/ncomms6956
DO - 10.1038/ncomms6956
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AN - SCOPUS:84943583982
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 6
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
M1 - 5956
ER -