Abstract
SEVERAL points urgently require clarification following my recent exchange of communications with Mr. Tamers1,2. First and most important, the limited available evidence does indeed suggest that a difference of several orders of magnitude exists between γ- and α-phase of iron for diffusion constants of hydrogen at room temperature. It is, of course, the room-temperature behaviour which is relevant for the problem of loss on Earth. Mr. Tamers quotes the paper of Sykes, Burton and Gegg3 as showing that these two diffusion constants differ by only a factor of 10 at 650° C. The identical equations and numbers from this paper demonstrate a difference of a factor of one million at room temperature (20° C).
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References
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TILLES, D. Meteoritic Tritium and Diffusion in α- and γ-Iron. Nature 201, 808–809 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1038/201808a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/201808a0
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