You are currently viewing the summary.
View Full TextLog in to view the full text
AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.
More options
Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use.
Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.
Summary
Isotopes of the noble gas xenon are generated in the earth by the decay of other radioactive elements. How the different isotopes are distributed is an important clue to the puzzle of how the early Earth formed. In his research commentary, Kaneoka discusses results published in the same issue by Kunz et al. in which precision mass spectrometry was used to analyze samples of mid-ocean ridge basalt to extract various isotope ratios. The findings provide answers to controversial questions about how the radioactive elements occur in Earth's interior, and lend support to particular models of Earth formation.
