^1,2Matthew J. Genge
¹Impact and Astromaterials Research Centre (IARC), Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK
²Department of Mineralogy, The Natural History Museum, London, UK

The Earth’s extraterrestrial dust flux includes a wide variety of dust particles that include FeNi metallic grains. During their atmospheric entry iron micrometeoroids melt and oxidize to form cosmic spherules termed I-type spherules. These particles are chemically resistant and readily collected by magnetic separation and are thus the most likely micrometeorites to be recovered from modern and ancient sediments. Understanding their behavior during atmospheric entry is crucial in constraining their abundance relative to other particle types and the nature of the zodiacal dust population at 1 AU. This article presents numerical simulations of the atmospheric entry heating of iron meteoroids to investigate the abundance and nature of these materials. The results indicate that iron micrometeoroids experience peak temperatures 300–800 K higher than silicate particles explaining the rarity of unmelted iron particles which can only be present at sizes of

Reference
Genge, MJ (2016) The origins of I-type spherules and the atmospheric entry of iron micrometeoroids. Meteoritics & Planetary Science (in Press)
Link to Article [DOI: 10.1111/maps.12645]
Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons