
In 1972, Scientists Discovered a Two Billion-Year-Old Nuclear Reactor In Gabon - tefo-mohapi
http://www.iafrikan.com/2015/11/02/did-you-hear-about-how-scientists-discovered-a-two-billion-year-old-nuclear-reactor-in-west-africa/
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dj-wonk
> Davis and co point out that the Oklo data can also constrain changes in
> other constants, such as the ratio of light quark masses to the proton mass.
> To date, this work is consistent with these constants being constant.

In the history of science, how many 'constants' have, so far, been shown not
to be constant?

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ChrisArgyle
To my knowledge none, but there do exist problematic constants that we can't
measure consistently. Famously, measurements of the gravitational constant G
vary in a pattern that repeats every 5.9 years. There are a few theories about
this systematic error but no solid supporting evidence in experiment form.

tl;dr No constants have been proven not-constant but there are some that might
be pending further research

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ccozan
This is quite interesting, is there a paper or some source of information
related to this?

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Estragon
[http://www.researchgate.net/publication/274780565_Measuremen...](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/274780565_Measurements_of_Newton's_gravitational_constant_and_the_length_of_day)

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Eric_WVGG
Steven Baxter’s ”Manifold: Space“ features one of these in a sort of Planet of
the Apes scenario. Great book.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold:_Space](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold:_Space)

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AnAfrican
As a side-note, it's always weird to me to see place like Gabon or Congo
called "West Africa".

It's clearly on the West Coast but within Africa, the West starts after
Cameroon.

~~~
giarc
It would be like someone calling Orlando, western USA. It's on a west coast,
and if you were to head west you would likely hit Mexico (maybe Texas...) but
it's obviously not western USA.

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carl689
I think you meant Tampa?

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giarc
You are right. I'm not from Florida (obviously).

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InclinedPlane
One interesting thing about this is that it represents a race, between the
concentration of Uranium in high-grade ores through geological processes
(which requires the Earth to have formed, and so on and so on) on the one hand
and the reduction in abundance of U-235 in natural Uranium over time due to
radioactive decay.

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legulere
> The one exception was a shallow reactor zone at a place called Bangombé,
> some 30 kilometres from Oklo, although this has largely been washed out by
> ground water.

That doesn't sound that safe to me after all.

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Torgo
I don't necessarily want to start a giant derail here, but this thing has some
social significance in that it resuscitated some pseudo-scientific claims
about advanced ancient human civilizations ala Atlantis, that suffered
cataclysm and disappeared from history.

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crpatino
Not human civilizations. 2 billion years is a lot of time... but it might be
weak evidence that we are not the first technological species in this planet.
If you consider that we are probably not the only intelligent species on the
planet just _now_ , it sounds at least plausible to me.

~~~
Torgo
Sure, pseudoscience has unlimited explanations :-) I've also heard it
explained as the engine from a crashed alien spaceship.

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the_watcher
This is simply astounding.

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fit2rule
Yes, it truly is. Like, a real wonder of the nature of the universe.

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yarou
What's truly amazing is the emergent properties of nature that lead to natural
structures such as this.

It makes me wonder if we can create cellular automata made from materials at a
nano-scale to mimic this process. Then you're one step away from a Von-Neumann
Universal Constructor.

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jgome
I always wondered if this ever happened naturally... Guess I now haev a
confirmation. Nice... I suppose.

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notdonspaulding
FWIW, the title on this post scans like the number 28 as opposed to the number
2 billion (to my eye, anyway).

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hammock
Yes, unfortunately the title was changed automatically by an HN title parser
upon submission. It changes references of million to M and billion to B.

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DanBC
But it didn't change your most recent submission?

Isn't this just someone trying to fit in the 80 char limit? Current title is
80 chars, so there's not enough room for the illion.

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hammock
It did change it, that's how I noticed in the first place. In my case I went
back and re-edited the title and that seemed to make it stick to "million"
instead of "M."

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dang
Url changed from [http://www.iafrikan.com/2015/11/02/did-you-hear-about-how-
sc...](http://www.iafrikan.com/2015/11/02/did-you-hear-about-how-scientists-
discovered-a-two-billion-year-old-nuclear-reactor-in-west-africa/), which
points to this.

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tefo-mohapi
Hi dang, the iAfrikan version is re-published, updated and edited with
permission.

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dang
The site guidelines ask for original sources. But we'll make an exception in
this case.

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tefo-mohapi
Ta

