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A Search for Natural Pu-244 in Deep-Sea Sediment: Progress Report

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Abstract

“Now-extant” Pu-244 discovered in a Precambrian bastnaesite by D.C. Hoffman et al. in 1971 was explained by one of the authors (K.S.) in 1974 as due to possible inflow to the Earth as a cosmic dust component from supernova remnants, not as due to survival of the primeval Pu-244 nor to cosmic ray component. A search for the “live” Pu-244 has recently been started with a 80 kg of wet sediment from 5800m in depth off Hawaii to see the inflow of the extra-Solar System material, and a preliminary result on alpha-counting for Pu-244 separated from a small portion corresponding to 400g of the sample indicates an upper limit that is comparable to the expected amount of Pu-244 in deep-sea sediment. The implications of this result and our future program will be discussed.

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© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Sakamoto, K., Hashimoto, Y., Nakanishi, T. (2002). A Search for Natural Pu-244 in Deep-Sea Sediment: Progress Report. In: Manuel, O. (eds) Origin of Elements in the Solar System. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-46927-8_37

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-46927-8_37

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-46562-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-306-46927-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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