IN THIS PROPOSAL WE AIM TO UNDERSTAND THE FORMATION OF THE PALLASITES METEORITES. OUR GOAL IS TO USE AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO REVEAL A NEW INDEPENDENT CONSTRAINT ON THE TEMPERATURE OF FORMATION. WE WILL CONDUCT EXPERIMENTS AT HIGH PRESSURE AND TEMPERATURE IN THE OLIVINE IRON METAL SYSTEM AND ANALYZE THE EXPERIMENTS WITH LASER ABLATION MC-ICPMS TO DETERMINE THE IRON ISOTOPIC FRACTIONATION AS A FUNCTION OF TEMPERATURE. WE WILL ALSO ANALYZE PALLASITES IN SITU TO DETERMINE THEIR IRON ISOTOPIC FRACTIONATION. WE WILL THEN USE OUR NEW THERMOMETER TO DETERMINE THE TEMPERATURE AT WHICH THE METAL AND OLIVINE IN PALLASITES LAST EQUILIBRATED. COMBINING EXPERIMENTAL PETROLOGY AND ISOTOPE GEOCHEMISTRY IS A PARTICULARLY VALUABLE TOOL AS THE INFORMATION LEARNED IS NOT BASED ON PRIOR ASSUMPTIONS OR CONSTRAINTS.

Carnegie Institution Of Washington, Washington DC

Investigators