Meet Samarium. Rare-earth metal, atomic symbol Sm, number 62. What’s really cool about it, is that it has three extremely long-lived isotopes: 147Sm (1.06 × 1011y), 148Sm (7 × 1015y) and 149Sm (>2 × 1015y). That’s right, 148Sm has a half-life of 7,000,000,000,000,000 years! When these decay, they become an isotope of neodymium. This makes it appropriate for dating extremely old objects — [...]
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Wow, that’s just asking to be completely mis-represented, and used as a metaphor for the bleeding of the planet. But I digress. The Blood Falls of Antarctica is a salt water plume off Taylor Valley that is hyper-saline, and filled with iron oxides, which account for the macabre color. Buried 400m beneath the surface of [...] |
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