Origin of Nickel in Deep-Sea Sediments

Abstract

Pettersson and Rotschi¹ have suggested that cosmic dust may be in part the source of the nickel found in Pacific deep-sea cores. In these cores nickel occurs in amounts up to 0.08 per cent, and it was stressed that this is considerably higher than the average value of 0.008 per cent given by Sandell and Goldich² for the uppermost crust of the earth. Öpik³ concurred with the view that the nickel is largely of cosmic origin, and concluded that the “zodiacal light as interpreted by van de Hulst⁴, and the cosmic nickel revealed by the Swedish Deep-Sea Expedition are produced mainly by primordial dust of the solar system spiralling towards the sun in orbits which are nearly circular”. Buddhue⁵ estimated from the amounts of cosmic dust brought down by rain that the annual fall of magnetic particles over the earth's surface is 35–70 × 10⁶ kgm., while Norris and Hogg⁶, from the weight of magnetic particles falling on trays exposed in north-west Canada, state that the annual fall per square kilometre amounts to less than half a kilogram. Support³ for a cosmic origin of nickel was also given by the similarity between van de Hulst's figure for the space density of the zodiacal light cloud of primordial dust and that required to account for the nickel content of deep-sea clays.