Tritium Retention in Iron Meteorites

Abstract

IN a recent communication, Tamers¹ has suggested that tritium in iron may decay radioactively with a time short compared with its twelve-year half-life, perhaps with a half-life of several days or less. He bases this suggestion principally on some misinterpretations of tritium measurements in iron meteorites. It may be useful to summarize the experimental meteorite evidence, which, if examined in detail, cannot be used to support such a suggestion. I should like here to present some of this evidence and to indicate briefly and in preliminary form a simple, plausible and physically reasonable explanation for the tritium observations in the iron–nickel phases of meteorites. A discussion of the other physical reasons for not believing Tamers's suggestion seems completely superfluous.