Stand-Alone Submission to the Decadal Survey Previously Overlooked/Ignored Electronic Charge Carriers in Rocks Friedemann Freund NASA Ames Research Center Department of Physics Earth Science Division, 242-4 Principal Investigator San Jose State University Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 Carl Sagan Center, SETI Institute San Jose, CA 95192-0106
[email protected] Mountain View, CA 94043 I would like to draw the attention of members of the Decadal Survey Committee to a rather fundamental discovery, which (I believe) will have a major impact on the Earth and Planetary Sciences in the coming years. We have been able to establish that all igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks, e.g. essentially the majority of the rocks in Earth’s crust, presumably also on Mars, Venus and Moon, contain electronic charge carriers that have been overlooked/ignored. These charge carriers pre-exist in the constituent minerals, albeit in an electrically inactive, dormant form. The charge carriers are activated by (i) heat, (ii) stress and probably (iii) UV. They have the unusual capability to flow out of the heated/stressed volume and to spread into the surrounding colder/unstressed rocks. The charge carriers travel fast and far. Their phase velocity is of the order of 200 m/sec. They can propagate over meters in laboratory experiments, presumably kilometers to tens of kilometers in the field. They traverse solid rocks, sedimentary rocks, sand and soil. They set up electrical potentials. They flow into water, oxidizing water to hydrogen peroxide. When they arrive at the Earth’s surface, they cause a plethora of interesting effects, both physical and chemical.