Piezonuclear reactions produced by brittle fracture: From laboratory to planetary scale.

Piezonuclear reactions are fissions of non radioactive, relatively light elements (iron or lighter) that split without a concomitant generation of gamma radiation or radioactive waste but give rise to neutron emissions. As evoked by the Greek root of the word, they are caused by pressure waves, in both liquids and solids. The earliest experiences in liquids were carried out at the National Research Centre in Rome by exposing aqueous solutions of iron salts to ultrasounds, whereas the initial experiments in solids were performed at the Politecnico di Torino, in collaboration with INFN (National Institute of Nuclear Physics) and INRIM (National Metrology Research Institute) researchers, using granite or basaltic rocks loaded in compression up to brittle failure. The salient results, which have already appeared in authoritative international experimental physics and experimental mechanics journals, provide direct and indirect evidence of the occurrence of piezonuclear reactions. Indirect evidence includes the neutron emissions that have been detected in a regular and reproducible fashion using different types of detector. It should be noted that, as a function of different parameters, including specimen size scale, the highest intensity emissions were recorded at the time of crushing failure with neutron counts exceeding the background value by one or two orders of magnitude. Direct evidence of piezonuclear reactions was obtained through a brand-new spectroscopic technique, EDS, which, by comparing a statistically significant number of points lying on the outer surface and the fracture faces of the specimen, and aiming directly on the only two iron ores present – Phengite and Biotite – was able to ascertain that iron, on average, was locally reduced by 25% and was replaced with atoms of aluminium (atomic number =13, half that of iron), silicon (atomic number =14) and magnesium (atomic number =12). Thus, the split was symmetrical in the case of aluminium, asymmetrical in the other instances. If these reactions can take place in a laboratory, where pressure and temperature conditions are much lower and, especially, the masses at play are way smaller than those found in the deep layers of the earth’s crust, they are bound to take place on a much larger scale within the latter, triggered by fracturing and crushing phenomena of seismic and tectonic origin. On the other hand, as pointed out in recent studies, neutron fluxes up to a thousand times the natural background level may be detected before and during earthquakes, including medium magnitude ones. It may be surprising to learn from the literature that piezonuclear reactions of the type we have described as having taken place almost instantaneously in granite specimens are deemed to have occurred in comparable proportions during the formation and through most of the activity of the tectonic plaques (from 3.8 through 2.5 billion years ago). In particular, it has been ascertained that the iron content in the earth’s crust has decreased from 8% to 4% by mass, while at the same time aluminium has increased from 4% to 8%. The location of all the major reserves of aluminium along the main fault planes (the perimeters of the tectonic plates) surely bears witness to the aforementioned considerations. Over even longer time spans we get a more complete picture encompassing all the most important elements: not just iron, nickel, aluminium, silicon, magnesium, but also calcium, potassium, sodium, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen. While alkaline earth elements convert into the alkali elements that immediately precede them by releasing a proton, the balance turns out just right if one considers the well-known, and still unexplained, 3% increase in oxygen, the so-called Great Oxidation Event, with the ensuing origin of life and formation of the oceans. It is also interesting to consider that a proportion of the magnesium converted into carbon (atomic number =6, half that of magnesium) and formed the earth’s early carbon dioxide and methane rich atmospheres. Maybe even more striking is the realization that cut and dry calculations will show how excess calcium turned into the water of the oceans while excess magnesium became the carbon of prototerrestrial atmospheres. Similarly, sodium chloride (sodium =11, chlorine =17) is thought to originate from the scission of nickel (atomic number =28). Iron and nickel are becoming extinguished, especially in the oceans. If they were confirmed by other laboratories, these results would be a major scientific discovery, totally across-the-board and interdisciplinary. Its importance lies in the fact that it accounts for many natural phenomena as yet unexplained. It is believed that this mechanism lends itself to the widest variety of applications: earthquake prediction, the study of carbon-related pollution, the acceleration of radioactive waste decay, and, ultimately, even the production of clean energy, appear altogether possible, if supported by appropriate scientific research.