This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (15 messages)
Doug, Llanoite (sometimes Llanite) is a rhyolite that contains bright pink orthoclase – sometimes _nice_ crystals, with knee twins. The blue is indeed quartz. It's really blue, too, not just bluish. The quartz contains reduced chromium, hence the blue color. And yes, Llanite does come from dikes extruded from the…
Jon, I looked once for K39/K40 segregation in the Llano uplift batholith. I had core samples from 3100 meters bearing K rich alkali feldspars, and similar samples from intrusive dikes from the San Saba (edge of uplift) area. To within 0.07%, the isotopic composition is identical. Note that I'm not…
Kamron, Take a physical chemistry course. Then look at phase rules in the face of pressures of kilobars. You will find that the Gibbs energies are quite high enough to favor segregation of minerals into separate aggregates. Oh, another thing. A lot of underground minerology is in solution, with the…
Boris, No, radioactivity vented by coal fired power plants is mostly radon and polonium (a daughter of radon). The rocks surrounding the (relatively) porous coal deposits contain uranium and thorium, which outgas radon continuously. Radon then collects in the coal, where it decays. The problem is that we burn so…
Doug, The hypophosphite ion is H2PO2-, with the other two hydrogens being bound directly to the phosphorous. I would presume it would be stable inside of solid crystals, but it air-oxidizes very rapidly. If I cracked open a rock and found a garlic smell, I would suspect arsenic or phosphorous…
Doug, You can find both phosphides and phosphonium salts among minerals from a few hydrothermal reducing zones. Most often, though, you find hypophosphites, that can decompose when acidified into phosphine and phosphate. Not to worry, though, these are really uncommon. When they occur at all, they occur along with native…
Doug, The "garlic" smell is arsine gas, AsH3. You can also get stibine SbH3 from antimony containing minerals, and phosphine PH3 from a -few- phosphorous containing minerals laid down in hydrothermal reduction zones. They all smell garlicy. In a lab, if you sniff one after another, you can learn to…
John, Well, you have to radiate at a wavelength at which air is mostly transparent. Moreover, you want to take precautions to insure that the cooling is largely radiative, without a large convective part. Clearly any scheme will transfer some heat to air, clouds, etc. However, the schemes we have…
John, Sure it is. But you -absolutely- can use refrigeration to cool the planet, and you don't have to toss hot rocks, either. What you have to do is radiate heat at night. And since radiative losses vary with the fourth power of T, it doesn't take too awful high…
Doug, You don't need fusion power, of course. ANY source of cheap energy will do for the processes you mention. What you are pointing out is that the cost of energy is a multiplier ontop of every single thing that is produced. Generate energy cheaply enough, and EVERYTHING gets cheaper.…
Kamron, Do you have any idea how long it takes to grow a crystalline surface in waters that are entirely saturated with calcium bicarbonate? Not geologic time – you can do it in a few months. The presence of such dendritic growth only means that the gravel hasn't been ground…
John, >> … who do you think killed Kennedy? Oswald, acting alone. He was -such- a nut case even the KGB didn't want him. — Norm
Doug, It's not that alkalinity per se and rare earths get along together, it's that the typical geomorphic carrier of rare earths is fluorine. And, the halogens and alkalis are both substantially volatile moeities, so they tend to end up together in rocks (or seawater!). The rare earths don't segregate…
Elizabeth, Clarthates aren't all that unusual. Zeolites do it all the time, usually the included fractions are bulky ions like rare earths. However, in the case of the Zeolites, rather than a neutral molecule, you have a positive ion displacing one (or more) of the small hydrogen ions. Physical clarthates…
Doug, You misunderstood my comments. TAPCIS has a SYSOP version, and in order to get access to the section in which the _SYSOP_ version is kept, your primary SYSOP has to request it from the TAPCIS people. You can download the non-SYSOP version any time. I believe that there is…