Nobel Laureate & Astronaut Join EARTH Advisory Board
EARTH scientists met at the Weehorst. Nobel laureate physics 1999, Gerard 't Hooft , Nobel laureate physics 1999, and astrounaut Wubbo Ockels joined the advisory committee of the EARTH project. 

                           
          Gerard 't Hooft                                  Wubbo Ockels

Introduction
The Foundation was established by the University of Groningen, ASTRON in Dwingeloo, both in the Netherlands, and the Jacob Gelt Dekker Institute in Willemstad, Curacao on September 1, 2005. Jacob Gelt Dekker serves as Chairman.

The Earth AntineutRino Tomography (EARTH) research and technological programmed aims to produce a topographic image of the radiogenic heat sources in the Earth's interior with a typical resolution of about 300km. Radiogenic heat sources produce through beta-decay antineutrinos. Antineutrinos can travel through the Earth without hardly any interaction. They are therefore the probe for the identification and location of radiogenic heat sources.

The aim can to be achieved by setting up a global network of underground antennas, each equipped with a manifold of small-sized, directional-sensitive antineutrino detector systems. In the present concept an antenna consists of thirty vertically drilled shafts (arms). At a certain depth the arms bend in a particular direction. Each arm is supposed to have a directional sensitivity of about 13°. All arms together cover the Earth's interior hemisphere.

Recently we have started to also investigate an antenna concept in which the detectors will be placed in a shallow underground laboratory. Combining the results of the global network of antennas will produce a topographic image of the location and the extent of antineutrino emitting heat sources. It is expected that the global network will reach a resolution of about 3° , corresponding to a resolution of about 300km at the centre of the Earth. From the energy of the antineutrinos the type of source can be deduced.

Earth AntineutRino Tomography (EARTH) research and technological programme aims to produce a tomographic image of the radiogenic heat sources in the Earth's interior with a typical resolution of about 300km. Radiogenic heat sources produce through beta-decay antineutrinos. Antineutrinos can travel through the Earth without hardly any interaction. They are therefore the probe for the identification and location of radiogenic heat sources. 

Why EARTH Foundation
   Mankind has an irresistible need to explore
   unknown territories. For that purpose new
   technologies have been developed from better
   sailing ships to spacecrafts. Even today
   missions are on their way to learn more about
   Mercury and Saturn. The successful landing
   of the Huygens satellite on Titan is one of the
   most recent examples. Nevertheless Terra
   Incognita remains very close, right under our
   feet. By mining and drilling mankind has drilled
   to only 13 km into the interior of our own
   planet.


In the beginning of the 20th century the knowledge on the interior of our planet advanced by the analysis of the reflection and absorption of seismic waves produced in earthquakes. This analysis has led to the present image of an onion like structure with a solid inner core, a liquid outer core and a mantle on which a crust is present. It inspired Jules Verne for its book on a journey to the centre of the Earth.

The interior of the Earth plays an important role for life at its surface. The magnetic field of our planet protects us from a lethal dose of cosmic radiation, whilst earthquakes and volcanic eruptions often notice the drift of the continents. Nowadays some scientists even relate the uneven internal heat flow at the Earth's surface to El Niño and its related impact on weather systems.

These phenomena raise the question where the internal heat of the Earth is generated, by what mechanism and how diffuse these heat sources are. Hypotheses on the internal structure hard to verify and are often invoked to explain certain aspects. Most hypotheses consider a more or less spherically symmetric structure and ignore possible local concentrations. The global surface heat flow, however, ranges over more than an order of magnitude. Is that an indication for energy clustering? And if so, how large are such clusters, where are they located and do they influence the motion in the liquid core, which is responsible for the geomagnetic field?

There is more or less consensus that at least half of the heat is generated by radioactivity. For most scientists this means the decay of the naturally occurring radionuclide. Recently, however, it has been proposed that at the centre of the Earth there is an ~8 km diameter nuclear breeder reactor. Is it possible to prove or disprove these hypotheses?
 
The detectors will in principle register antineutrinos from all sources. In addition to antineutrinos produced in the Earth's interior, antineutrinos are also produced in radioactive decay of rocks in the crust, nuclear power plants. Energetically these antineutrinos have the same energy characteristics as their counterparts in the interior and therefore form a background. We are convinced that with the anticipated directional sensitivity we will be able to distinguish between the sources at the surface and deeper in the Earth. For the first antenna we like to reduce complexity and have therefore opted for a location far away from nuclear power plants as well as from large granitic rock formations, which are traditionally rich in the natural radionuclide 40K, 232Th and 238U. Such a location can be found at a number of places: e.g. Hawaii, Iceland, parts of Southern Africa and Australia, and Curacao.

Our choice for Curacao is primarily motivated by the facts that the island is easily accessible from various parts of the world, plus the fact that the island's rocks have relatively few natural radionuclide that could mask the  (antineutrino) signal from the Earth's core, and that idea of the EARTH programme originated in the Netherlands and Curacao is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

January 2005 meeting with (then) Minister Cova at the Kura Hulanda Hotel. From left to right: Jacob Gelt Dekker, Emiel van der Graaf, Rob de Meijer and Minster Cova. (Courtesy of Antilliaans Dagblad)
 

    visit the website of Stichting EARTH