The Beginning, The Earth Mechanism

I believe of these massive changes has already begun deep within the earth although the visible signs are mostly still pretty subtle. More than a decade ago, and at this point I still do not remember the exact year, there was a deep quake off the coast of Oregon that was of a fairly substantial magnitude.

The impressive thing about this quake was the depth, around 300 miles down, well into the mantle. Because of it's distance off shore it could not have been a subduction event, it was actually closer to the mid-ocean rift where new magma comes up and forms new ocean crust.

But one deep quake, well, they happen, no biggie. But within just weeks I heard of another somewhere else, and it was also very deep. I thought this odd and so I wanted to understand more about these quakes, how common they are, how they are distributed. Do they tend to occur only along the mid-ocean rifts, only along subduction zones, only in some particular region of the planet?

So I did a search of various online earth quake databases, some of which went back to the 1950's. Accurate data beyond that time frame was pretty unobtainable, only estimates based upon damage for the most part.

I searched for all quakes of magnitude 7 or greater, at depths of 300km or greater, and what I found was very interesting. I found that, in that year, there had been ten times as many of these quakes as any previous year on record. Further, they were seemingly distributed randomly around the globe. They were not common to any particular region, or to subduction zones or mid-ocean rift systems.

The following year saw a number only slightly elevated from the background level and the years after that saw a normal background level for as long as I had followed it (I have not for some time).

Because of the narrow chronological concentration of these events, I believed that one event was responsible for the unusually high deep quake activity. Because the quakes were distributed globally, I believed it had to be some very deep event, possibly right at the earth's core, although I did entertain one other possibility.

In terms of what might be happening in the core, I have noticed there seems to be periods of high volcanic activity globally and periods of relatively low activity. I tried to imagine a mechanism that might be responsible and I came up with one, a very large natural fission reactor operating in a sort of pulsed mode.

Here is basically what I thought could happen. We all know that the elements in the earth are largely gravitationally separated. Heavy elements like iron tend to sink to the core, light elements like silicon, magnesium, and aluminum tend to float. Convection within the earths core and mantle do provide some distribution of these elements however so gravitational separation is not absolute.

So my idea is that very heavy elements, uranium and thorium in particular, are concentrated even more effectively than iron and other stable elements. Further, that under the conditions of extreme pressure, efficient separation, and just a large amount of mass, these elements reach criticality and a chain reaction ensues. This chain reaction creates much more rapid heating than natural nuclear decay. This rapid heating increases convection which ultimately disperses the fissionables and the reaction stops. This cycle creates the pulsed mode of the natural core reactor and is responsible for pulsed waves of heat gradually making it to the surface and by extension the cycles of volcanic activity.

I shared this idea with a geologist at the University of Washington, and unfortunately, I do not remember his name, but his response was that this hypothesis was testable because natural radioactive decay produces He4 (Alpha particles) but does not produce He3, however, fission products of a nuclear chain reaction does include He3, so he reasoned that measuring the isotopic ratios of He3/He4 upwelling at the mid-ocean ridge should prove or disprove this theory.

A number of years later a mission to sample the gases upwelling at the mid-ocean rift was conducted, the ratio of He3 to He4 measured, and the results were consistent with my hypothesis of a natural fission reactor operating at the core.

This didn't prove the pulsed mode of operation, but I think there is reason to believe such a mode would exist rather than one in which an equilibrium exists. The reason I think this is likely is because I believe that this natural reactor at the core differs from other natural reactors found near the surface in that it lacks water as a natural moderator. U238 and thorium will not fission by slow neutrons but will fission by a fast neutron. I believe the lack of water in sufficient quantities to serve as an efficient moderator, and the preponderance of thorium and u238, elements which are merely fertile with slow neutron activation but fissionable with fast neutrons, suggests strongly that the chain reaction was dominated by fast neutrons.

Because no moderation has to take place between the emission of a neutron from one fission reaction and the absorption by another atom causing it to fission, once criticality is reached, the reaction rate of a fast neutron reactor can increase extremely rapidly. Trying to reach equilibrium under these conditions is rather like trying to balance a pencil on it's point, and I believe it is for this reason that the natural reactor at the core operates in a pulsed mode.

The fact that a high percentage of He3 was found in gases coming from mid-ocean rift vents suggests that this natural core reactor either is or recently was active.

I believe that this historically recent low level of volcanic activity has been the result of a period of non-criticality of this natural reactor but only recently it reached criticality again and another pulse of heat resulted. I believe it was that pulse responsible for rapidly increased convection that caused the high count of mantle depth earthquakes more than a decade ago.

I believe this heat will continue coming up until it reaches the surface and dissipates and in so doing the increased convection and heat will result in increased volcanic activity and perhaps serve as the physical driving force for some of these earth changes.

We are seeing this in terms of increased volcanic activity along the mid-ocean rift and in other areas but I think we are just seeing the very beginnings of more drastic changes to come.