Planetary Chemistry Lesson

[babe]

Some basic understanding of the elements and their properties would go a long way towards educating political activists worried about stuff like climate, extinction events, and environment. And other stuff like economics as well.

The universe is mostly hydrogen, with some flourish in isotopic variants. Pretty safe to say most hydrogen is the proton/electron sort with no neutron in the nucleus, across the cosmos. I mean we have data on hydrogen present in stars because of spectroscopic instruments that can measure the various electronic modes associated with the emission of light of specific wavelengths known to be due to specific electronic transitions.

It takes sort of nuclear production factory called a "sun" to do hydrogen fusion reactions and other fusion reactions required to build up inventories of other elements. Well, of course it's the exception that proves the rule. We do know that some elements are formed elsewhere. Beryllium, for example, is not seen in the spectra of stars. Some believe it is formed in space at cold temperatures by high energy collisions, mostly in the upper ionized atmosphere in the case of planet earth. It's also no present in increased proportions in volcanic or other igneous rock except it is found in Uranium and rare earth deposits in increased amounts, specific to rocks with fission going o n at some rate, and may be a product of such processes.

Beryllium is very light, 4 proton nucleus. If it were part of the solar source processes it would occur in deposits with Lithium and Boron perhaps, and be concentrated in salt solutions. But Be is not like Magnesium in that respect because of its stronger affinity for oxygen. It is formed in our upper atmosphere, and oxidizes as it comes to ground, and there forms a stronger mineral association with silicates. It does mobilize in water flows and accumulates in the marginal clays and sands of lakes. Ocean waves disturb the accumulation too much. So if you're prospecting for Be, look it in geologically long-term lakeshores like those of the Great Basin, which has the world's best deposits. In Utah, the three best known deposits also are coincident with a massive geologic formation around an ancient mountain range..... one of the earliest formed mountain ranges in earth history, which was also higher than the Himalayas, which ran eat-west along a zone which is evident today in the Uintas, but extending across Millard county into Nevada. This range was formed after the Precambrian and other carboniferous deposits which in places reached thicknesses of accumulated carbonates from 6K to 17K feet in depth, formed sequentially under an ancient shallow sea.

So it was part of the dust annually washed off the mountains into seas and lakes flanking it. We know this range had serious deposits of Uranium because today we prospect for Uranium in the sediments washed off that mountain, across Eastern Utah, Northern New Mexico and Northern Arizona, where is is laid down along old stream beds. And U is associated with the Utah Be deposits as well.

So, anyway, kiddos, all planets have circumstances, and histories. You can track those conditions in the chemistry so far as we know it.

 

[babe]

Some basic understanding of the elements and their properties would go a long way towards educating political activists worried about stuff like climate, extinction events, and environment. And other stuff like economics as well.

The universe is mostly hydrogen, with some flourish in isotopic variants. Pretty safe to say most hydrogen is the proton/electron sort with no neutron in the nucleus, across the cosmos. I mean we have data on hydrogen present in stars because of spectroscopic instruments that can measure the various electronic modes associated with the emission of light of specific wavelengths known to be due to specific electronic transitions.

It takes sort of nuclear production factory called a "sun" to do hydrogen fusion reactions and other fusion reactions required to build up inventories of other elements. Well, of course it's the exception that proves the rule. We do know that some elements are formed elsewhere. Beryllium, for example, is not seen in the spectra of stars. Some believe it is formed in space at cold temperatures by high energy collisions, mostly in the upper ionized atmosphere in the case of planet earth. It's also no present in increased proportions in volcanic or other igneous rock except it is found in Uranium and rare earth deposits in increased amounts, specific to rocks with fission going o n at some rate, and may be a product of such processes.

Beryllium is very light, 4 proton nucleus. If it were part of the solar source processes it would occur in deposits with Lithium and Boron perhaps, and be concentrated in salt solutions. But Be is not like Magnesium in that respect because of its stronger affinity for oxygen. It is formed in our upper atmosphere, and oxidizes as it comes to ground, and there forms a stronger mineral association with silicates. It does mobilize in water flows and accumulates in the marginal clays and sands of lakes. Ocean waves disturb the accumulation too much. So if you're prospecting for Be, look it in geologically long-term lakeshores like those of the Great Basin, which has the world's best deposits. In Utah, the three best known deposits also are coincident with a massive geologic formation around an ancient mountain range..... one of the earliest formed mountain ranges in earth history, which was also higher than the Himalayas, which ran eat-west along a zone which is evident today in the Uintas, but extending across Millard county into Nevada. This range was formed after the Precambrian and other carboniferous deposits which in places reached thicknesses of accumulated carbonates from 6K to 17K feet in depth, formed sequentially under an ancient shallow sea.

So it was part of the dust annually washed off the mountains into seas and lakes flanking it. We know this range had serious deposits of Uranium because today we prospect for Uranium in the sediments washed off that mountain, across Eastern Utah, Northern New Mexico and Northern Arizona, where is is laid down along old stream beds. And U is associated with the Utah Be deposits as well.

So, anyway, kiddos, all planets have circumstances, and histories. You can track those conditions in the chemistry so far as we know it.

The next topic I select is Carbon.

Carbon is one of the most abundant elements. The greatest proportion of Carbon compounds universally would rationally be expected to be hydrocarbons. C and H, the most abundant element in the universe. But hydrocarbons are subject to oxidation where ever there is oxygen and any real heat. I mean, warmer than liquid water. But most of the hydrogen we have is in the form of H2O. Between C and O, almost all H is accounted for.

For decades our schools have lied to us, not because of any deliberate intention, but for plain ignorance of the elements. We have been told that oil is the result of photosynthesis, because of buried plant material in anoxic sediments. But most plant material is oxidized not in fires but in gradual oxidation in our air today. And despite a dominance of biotic oil present in sedimentary layers, complete with all kinds of known plant derived partially oxidized substances, there is growing recognition today of abiotic hydrocarbons that have been accumulated deeper in our rock formations than Cambrian (meaning having life forms evident in debris or fossil form). These deposits, and some fraction of deposits in higher layers of rock, represent hydrocarbons in the material accreted to our planet in a hot, molten even, but anoxic mass. A very large deficit of oxygen exists in the elemental abundance distribution. We simply never had enough oxygen to oxidize everything in our planet, and most of the oxygen was used up in CO2 and H2O, and SO2, with perhaps smaller amounts consumed by silicates and phosphate

That is why we believe our core is mostly iron in the meatal form, and why in geology we have two mineral zones, the upper one being the oxidation zone, underlain by a sulfide zone. below these, our minerals are pretty much metallic. Contact with subsurface waters explains a lot of the oxide zone.

The gist of all this is just this.

I'm not so worried about exhausting our oil any time soon. We have been lied to about the abundance of oil and gas for decades, while our oil companies have quietly been laying claims to everything....... and saying nothing about it for the most part. Damn monopolists, cartelists. Will run down the prices overy so often to clear the ground, so to speak, of upstart competition......

Our current "price war" is the damnest Saudi Arabia and Russia can do not just to establish their own positions but to eliminate American frackers.

But still, why just burn it???? It has much better uses, higher value uses.

 

[babe]

The next topic I select is Carbon.

Carbon is one of the most abundant elements. The greatest proportion of Carbon compounds universally would rationally be expected to be hydrocarbons. C and H, the most abundant element in the universe. But hydrocarbons are subject to oxidation where ever there is oxygen and any real heat. I mean, warmer than liquid water. But most of the hydrogen we have is in the form of H2O. Between C and O, almost all H is accounted for.

For decades our schools have lied to us, not because of any deliberate intention, but for plain ignorance of the elements. We have been told that oil is the result of photosynthesis, because of buried plant material in anoxic sediments. But most plant material is oxidized not in fires but in gradual oxidation in our air today. And despite a dominance of biotic oil present in sedimentary layers, complete with all kinds of known plant derived partially oxidized substances, there is growing recognition today of abiotic hydrocarbons that have been accumulated deeper in our rock formations than Cambrian (meaning having life forms evident in debris or fossil form). These deposits, and some fraction of deposits in higher layers of rock, represent hydrocarbons in the material accreted to our planet in a hot, molten even, but anoxic mass. A very large deficit of oxygen exists in the elemental abundance distribution. We simply never had enough oxygen to oxidize everything in our planet, and most of the oxygen was used up in CO2 and H2O, and SO2, with perhaps smaller amounts consumed by silicates and phosphate

That is why we believe our core is mostly iron in the meatal form, and why in geology we have two mineral zones, the upper one being the oxidation zone, underlain by a sulfide zone. below these, our minerals are pretty much metallic. Contact with subsurface waters explains a lot of the oxide zone.

The gist of all this is just this.

I'm not so worried about exhausting our oil any time soon. We have been lied to about the abundance of oil and gas for decades, while our oil companies have quietly been laying claims to everything....... and saying nothing about it for the most part. Damn monopolists, cartelists. Will run down the prices overy so often to clear the ground, so to speak, of upstart competition......

Our current "price war" is the damnest Saudi Arabia and Russia can do not just to establish their own positions but to eliminate American frackers.

But still, why just burn it???? It has much better uses, higher value uses.

In Earth history, we know quite a bit about the few thousands of feet, some 500 million years of deposits and shifts of crustal sections. We know the surface layers have a larger proportion of lighter elements, and are mineralogically mostly oxides. The oldest oxide layer is the PreCambrian deposits, mostly pure mineral precipitates of carbonates of calcium and magnesium, with little or no biological debris. As much as 8000 feet thick under the first oceans Earth had of this chemical rock. Other deposits of sulfates came later, because sulfates are very soluble, and you need to put an ocean or lake out to dry to get sulfate deposits. Southern Utah and Southern Nevada and New Mexico have vast sulfate depostis...... gypsum, used in building materials as wallboard. We have more gypsum in high quality deposits than we would need in thousands of years of buildings at todays rates. But gympsum is highly recyclable, and we should just do that. It is, in terms of civilizaation, the moral equivalent of not just sitting in our ****.

Other elements that figure significantly in the crust include aluminum, silicon, iron, and the alkali and alkaline earths. We don't see so much of the heavier elements of these, partially because of initial quantities but also because likely they have higher proportions in deeper strata. Iron is thought to be perhaps the most abundant element of all if you consider the belief that it is the core of the planet, in a solid form under extreme pressure even with a temp of 3000K to 6000K

I don't entirely believe it's just that simple, or course.

Of particular importance to us economically, are the elements Lithium, Magnesium, Aluminum, and Titanium. This is our future. The iron age is on the wane. These are lighter metals with importantly resist corrosion. Except Titanium, these easily oxidized metals form a thin oxide crust that resists further oxidation, but they are extremely flammable if heated enough in air. Refineries producing these metals must use inert cover gases. Titanium does not form that oxide crust, but it is very resistant to corrosion, much more so than iron.

My father was the head chemist at Timet in Henderson for many years. He would get Timet machinist to make him titanium stuff like evaporative cooler parts that would last forever. Even dog tags. I believe the military uses titanium on their ID tags. The tag will be unaffected however many years it is in the ocean, say, in a sunk ship, or however hot a jet burns....

Titanijum is the ninth most abundant element in the Earth's crust. It is in soils to the extent of 1% to 2%. Important deposits are sea sands in some areas. It's heaver than Silicon, and tends to be concentrated by wave action. It occurs as the oxide, used widely in paints for the base white color we frequently see on cars and appliances, part of the procelain glaze on toilets.....

The cost of Titanium is almost all electricity, needed to produce magnesium metal which is then reacted with TiCl4 gas (The Kroll Process). There are other economic processes but this is often the most economic. And our Utilities and gone away from nuclear power plants, first to coal and now to natural gas. Really very stupid, and really very very expensive. But hey, cartelists do what cartelists must do, right????

The drive away from nuclear was the political result of long term planning to dumb down mankind and reduce living conveniences because humans are a plague, there's just too many of us, and we have to quit being 7 Billion and go to maybe 1 Billion. And besides, it's just too much work and bother to produce so much stuff industrially when there's so much better profit to be had in using Chinese slavery to make cheap WalMart trash we will buy on impulse......

Lyndon Larouche bjuilt his little socialist highbrow..... French not British based...... cult on the Catholic ideal of a growing world with more people better educated so we can move on to other planets and stars beyond. I have met Larouche a number of times. The Bush family really hated him, the British royal really hated him too. I'm really a Brit disloyal to my tribe on the grounds that I like humans and I think we can use technology to make the world both cleaner and more hospitable.

The real solution to the Climate Crisis is to promote Photosynthesis and to use the grass and wood and everything else as economically as we can for fuel if we must burn anything. At least harvest and graze not just let it burn.

In northern California, north of the Delta especially, there are lots of signs for the governor:



"Log it, Graze it, or watch it burn."

the mythology about old growth forests and beneficial fires, while having some basis, is largely pushed for the agenda of curtailing population growth and establishing monopolistic economies under the dishonest "socialism" flag, in that the real power driving the agenda is Fascist.

 

[babe]

In Earth history, we know quite a bit about the few thousands of feet, some 500 million years of deposits and shifts of crustal sections. We know the surface layers have a larger proportion of lighter elements, and are mineralogically mostly oxides. The oldest oxide layer is the PreCambrian deposits, mostly pure mineral precipitates of carbonates of calcium and magnesium, with little or no biological debris. As much as 8000 feet thick under the first oceans Earth had of this chemical rock. Other deposits of sulfates came later, because sulfates are very soluble, and you need to put an ocean or lake out to dry to get sulfate deposits. Southern Utah and Southern Nevada and New Mexico have vast sulfate depostis...... gypsum, used in building materials as wallboard. We have more gypsum in high quality deposits than we would need in thousands of years of buildings at todays rates. But gympsum is highly recyclable, and we should just do that. It is, in terms of civilizaation, the moral equivalent of not just sitting in our ****.

Other elements that figure significantly in the crust include aluminum, silicon, iron, and the alkali and alkaline earths. We don't see so much of the heavier elements of these, partially because of initial quantities but also because likely they have higher proportions in deeper strata. Iron is thought to be perhaps the most abundant element of all if you consider the belief that it is the core of the planet, in a solid form under extreme pressure even with a temp of 3000K to 6000K

I don't entirely believe it's just that simple, or course.

Of particular importance to us economically, are the elements Lithium, Magnesium, Aluminum, and Titanium. This is our future. The iron age is on the wane. These are lighter metals with importantly resist corrosion. Except Titanium, these easily oxidized metals form a thin oxide crust that resists further oxidation, but they are extremely flammable if heated enough in air. Refineries producing these metals must use inert cover gases. Titanium does not form that oxide crust, but it is very resistant to corrosion, much more so than iron.

My father was the head chemist at Timet in Henderson for many years. He would get Timet machinist to make him titanium stuff like evaporative cooler parts that would last forever. Even dog tags. I believe the military uses titanium on their ID tags. The tag will be unaffected however many years it is in the ocean, say, in a sunk ship, or however hot a jet burns....

Titanijum is the ninth most abundant element in the Earth's crust. It is in soils to the extent of 1% to 2%. Important deposits are sea sands in some areas. It's heaver than Silicon, and tends to be concentrated by wave action. It occurs as the oxide, used widely in paints for the base white color we frequently see on cars and appliances, part of the procelain glaze on toilets.....

The cost of Titanium is almost all electricity, needed to produce magnesium metal which is then reacted with TiCl4 gas (The Kroll Process). There are other economic processes but this is often the most economic. And our Utilities and gone away from nuclear power plants, first to coal and now to natural gas. Really very stupid, and really very very expensive. But hey, cartelists do what cartelists must do, right????

The drive away from nuclear was the political result of long term planning to dumb down mankind and reduce living conveniences because humans are a plague, there's just too many of us, and we have to quit being 7 Billion and go to maybe 1 Billion. And besides, it's just too much work and bother to produce so much stuff industrially when there's so much better profit to be had in using Chinese slavery to make cheap WalMart trash we will buy on impulse......

Lyndon Larouche built his little socialist highbrow..... French not British based...... cult on the Catholic ideal of a growing world with more people better educated so we can move on to other planets and stars beyond. I have met Larouche a number of times. The Bush family really hated him, the British royal really hated him too. I'm really a Brit disloyal to my tribe on the grounds that I like humans and I think we can use technology to make the world both cleaner and more hospitable.

The real solution to the Climate Crisis is to promote Photosynthesis and to use the grass and wood and everything else as economically as we can for fuel if we must burn anything. At least harvest and graze not just let it burn.

In northern California, north of the Delta especially, there are lots of signs for the governor:



"Log it, Graze it, or watch it burn."

the mythology about old growth forests and beneficial fires, while having some basis, is largely pushed for the agenda of curtailing population growth and establishing monopolistic economies under the dishonest "socialism" flag, in that the real power driving the agenda is Fascist.

With an actually scientific and production-oriented economy, we can build with abundant if not inexhaustible resources of cement, lightweight metals, high-tech or engineered materials. Lumber is more "green" if used in buildings than left to burn in the forests. Cement is a net zero on carbon dioxide balance...... Cows grazing do not emit as much greenhouse gas as grass left to decay in the heat and sun, or rot in the soil.

So much of what our schools are teaching, and what Big Bird and our media is preaching, is insanely false if not outrageously ignorant. The only way we can get this crazy is by having an agenda propagandized to push us off the cliff into panic...... and about the only reason to do such a thing, is powerful people who really just believe there are too many little people in the first place, and who have concocted a scheme to benefit themselves by further monopolization of our politics and economy.

 

[Scat]

Slow day at work?

 

[babe]

Slow day at work?

what's your best guess.