¹Roberto Conconi,¹Hugues Leroux,²Maya Marinova,¹Sylvain Laforet,¹Damien Jacob,³Léna Jossé,³Alice Aléon-Toppani,³Zélia Dionnet,³Rosario Brunetto,¹Corentin Le Guillou
Meteoritics & Planetary Science (in Press) Open Access Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.70083]
¹Universite de Lille, CNRS, INRAE, Centrale Lille, UMR 8207-UMET-Unit et Materiaux et Transformations, Villeneuve d’Ascq,France
²Universite de Lille, CNRS, INRAE, Centrale Lille, Universit´e Artois, FR 2638-IMEC-Institut Michel-Eugene Chevreul,Villeneuve d’Ascq, France
³Universite Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Orsay, France
Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons

Samples returned from asteroid Ryugu by the Hayabusa2 mission are dominated by fine-grained matrix material made of phyllosilicates and nanosulfides. Here, we report the mineralogical, textural, and chemical characteristics of nanosulfide-rich regions identified in Ryugu particles. High-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy reveal nanoscale heterogeneities in sulfide composition and morphology, indicating formation under variable conditions. Nanosulfide-rich regions are dominated by the presence of mackinawite (FeS) and pyrrhotite (Fe1-xS), in different proportions. Mackinawite, identified for the first time in Ryugu, occurs as well-crystallized lamellar crystals with some areas containing greigite (Fe3S4) and others showing signs of oxidation. In contrast, pyrrhotite appears either as euhedral nanocrystals or as structurally complex grains composed of stacked platy segments, which are characterized by numerous defects, including inclusions and planar defects. The distribution and associations of these phases are consistent with low-temperature aqueous alteration under alkaline and reducing conditions, likely occurring in Ryugu’s parent body. The presence of mackinawite implies complex thermodynamic and kinetic constraints and suggests the presence of localized fluids in which Fe concentrations exceeded those of S by an order of magnitude.

^1,2Walter Alvarez
Meteoritics & Planetary Science (in Press) Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.70084]
¹Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
²Osservatorio Geologico di Coldigioco, Apiro, Italy
Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons

Astronomy and geology: the first deals with myriad, enormous, unreachable objects seen at great distances and at very low resolution; the other investigates one tiny (by comparison) object, Earth, at close range, from planetary scale down to almost atomic resolution in the laboratory. Planetary Science, studying solar system objects, to some extent bridges the gap between astronomy and geology. Astronomers mostly look up; geologists mostly look down. This paper lists cases where studies in one of those fields have contributed to understanding in the other. The central focus is on investigations of the Cretaceous and Paleogene pelagic Scaglia limestone in the Italian Apennine Mountains where geologic studies bear on five classes of solar system objects. The classes are separated by three orders of magnitude in size: the Moon-forming impactor, bolides that form craters on Earth, meteorites, meteor-forming grains, and extraterrestrial dust. The paper closes by calling attention to LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, in which astronomical discoveries made by looking down have yielded a geological discovery done by looking up. LIGO has detected distant collisions involving black holes and neutron stars by measuring infinitesimal distortions of the Earth, which in turn have shown that at least some of Earth’s supply of heavy elements has been created by collisions of pairs of neutron stars—a major contribution to geochemistry and cosmochemistry.