Experimental Limit to Interstellar 244Pu Abundance

Details Experimental Limit to Interstellar 244Pu Abundance Experimental Limit to Interstellar 244Pu Abundance

2001-06-12

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0106205v3

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

10 p, 1 fig, LateX(AASTeX) Accepted for publication in ApJL, aug 2, 2001

Scientific paper

10.1086/323617

Short-lived nuclides, now extinct in the solar system, are expected to be present in the interstellar medium (ISM). Grains of ISM origin were recently discovered in the inner solar system and at Earth orbit and may accrete onto Earth after ablation in the atmosphere. A favorable matrix for detection of such extraterrestrial material is presented by deep open-sea sediments with very low sedimentation rates (0.8-3 mm/kyr). We report here on the measurement of Pu isotopic abundances in a 1-kg deep-sea dry sediment collected in 1992 in the North Pacific. Our measured value of (3+-3)x10^5 244Pu atoms in the Pu-separated fraction of the sample shows no excess over the expected stratospheric nuclear fallout content and under reasonable assumptions we derive a limit of 2x10^-11 g-244Pu/g-ISM for the abundance of 244Pu in ISM.

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