Abstract
IN a communication in the Zeitschrift für Naturforschung of August 2, 1950, we have reported our attempts to prove the presence of tritium (H3) in the atmosphere. The free atmospheric hydrogen, which is found in the air in a concentration of 5 × 10−7, was burned with copper oxide out of the helium–neon fraction of an air-liquefaction plant. The water was electrolysed down to one-fortieth of its volume in order to enrich the tritium twenty times. The tritium-containing hydrogen of the enriched water was used to make ethane, the activity of which could easily be examined. According to our measurements, about one mole of elementary tritium is present in the whole dry atmosphere of the earth, or one atom of tritium in 10 cm.3 of air. Evidently this tritium has been produced by nuclear fission in the upper layers of the atmosphere, and did not take part in the atmospheric water circulation, but has remained elementary hydrogen.
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HARTECK, P., FALTINGS, V. The Helium-3 Problem of the Atmosphere. Nature 166, 1109 (1950). https://doi.org/10.1038/1661109a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1661109a0
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