Abstract
COLLABORATION between Austrian, Norwegian and Swedish specialists gave the first accurate measurements of the content of uranium and radium in sea water1. These results have recently been confirmed by measurements on much more extensive material collected during the Swedish Deep-Sea Expedition2. Whereas uranium remains fairly constant (average content 1.3 × 10−6 gm. per litre), the radium content is more variable, averaging about 0.07 × 10−12 gm. per litre or 15 per cent of the theoretical value in equilibrium with the dissolved uranium. I have suggested that this lack of radium in ocean waters is due to precipitation of its parent element ionium together with ferric hydroxide3. This would also explain the surprisingly high radium content found in the surface layer of red clay and radiolarian ooze as ionium-supported radium, decreasing downwards with the half-period of ionium, 83,000 years. Such a falling-off in radium content was first demonstrated in long cores by Piggot and Urry4, and has been used in their attempts to estimate the rate of sedimentation.
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Pettersson, H., et al., Medd. Oc. Inst., No. 2 (1939).
Koczy, G., Mitt. Inst. Radiumforschung, 463 (Vienna, 1950).
Pettersson, H., Wiener Anzeiger, 1 (1937).
Piggot, C. S., and Urry, Vm. D., Amer. J. Sci., 240, 1 and 93 (1942).
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PETTERSSON, H. Radium and Deep-Sea Chronology. Nature 167, 942 (1951). https://doi.org/10.1038/167942a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/167942a0
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