paper has been published in Nature about the detection of a surprising amount, for Earth, of Helium-3, a rare form of helium known for its relative abundance on the lunar surface and its usefulness in fueling high-efficiency, neutron-reducing nuclear fusion reactors. It was found to be approximately 67 times more abundant than normal in volcanic rocks from Canada’s Baffin Island, supporting the theory that the noble gas is escaping from the Earth’s core—and has been doing so for millennia. The research team also detected Helium-4 within the rocks. But while Helium-4 is common on Earth, Helium-3 is more readily found elsewhere in the cosmos, which is why scientists were surprised to detect a greater amount of the element than previously reported in the Baffin Island rocks. A study describing the discovery was recently published in the journal Nature. This doesn’t change much about China and the United States’ strong interest in lunar helium-3, as it remains very rare on Earth compared to the Moon. Therefore, there remains great interest in returning to the Moon. The scientific discovery, however, is very useful for better characterizing the extreme depths of the Earth’s mantle, all the way down to the surface of our planet’s iron core. Lava associated with mantle plumes has been observed to have higher 3He/4He ratios than the convective upper mantle, which helps refine geophysical, geodynamic, and geochemical models of Earth’s deep interior. The authors of the paper argue that the extremely high concentration of helium-3 relative to helium-4 could derive directly from the Earth’s core.
