Cosmic symplectite recorded irradiation by nearby massive stars in the solar system’s parent molecular cloud

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¹Lionel G.Vacher,¹Ryan C.Ogliore,²Clive Jones,²Nan Liu,²David A.Fike
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (in Press) Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2021.06.026]
¹Department of Physics, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
²Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
Copyright Elsevier

The Sun’s astrophysical birth environment affected the formation and composition of the Solar System. Primitive meteorites display mass-independent oxygen isotope anomalies that were likely caused by ultraviolet (UV) photochemistry of CO gas-phase molecules, either (i) in the outer solar nebula by light from the young Sun or (ii) in the parent molecular cloud by light from nearby stars. However, measurements of oxygen isotopes alone cannot unambiguously constrain the UV spectrum of the source responsible for the photochemistry. Sulfur, with four stable isotopes, can be used as a more direct probe of the astrophysical environment of mass-independent photochemistry. Here, we report the in situ isotopic analysis of paired oxygen and sulfur isotope systematics in cosmic symplectite (COS), magnetite-pentlandite intergrowths, in the primitive ungrouped carbonaceous chondrite Acfer 094. We show that COS grains contain mass-independent sulfur isotope anomalies (weighted means of Δ33S = +3.84 ± 0.72‰ and Δ36S = −6.05 ± 2.25‰, 2SE) consistent with H2S photochemistry by UV from massive O and B stars close to the Solar System’s parent molecular cloud, and inconsistent with UV from the protosun. The presence of coupled mass-independent sulfur and oxygen (Δ17O = 86 ± 6‰, 2SE) isotope anomalies in COS imply that these anomalies originated in the same astrophysical environment. We propose that this environment is the photodissociation region (PDR) of the Solar System’s parent molecular cloud, where nearby massive stars irradiated the edge of the cloud. We conclude that the Sun’s stellar neighbors, likely O and B stars in a massive-star-forming region, affected the composition of the Solar System’s primordial building blocks.

Origin of micrometer-sized impact diamonds in ureilites by catalytic growth involving Fe-Ni-silicide: the example of Kenna meteorite

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¹Anna Barbaro,¹Maria Chiara Domeneghetti,^2,3Konstantin D.Litasov,⁴Ludovic Ferrière,⁴Lidia Pittarello,⁵Oliver Christ,⁵Sofia Lorenzon,¹Matteo Alvaro,^5,6Fabrizio Nestola
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (in Press) Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2021.06.022]
¹Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e dell’Ambiente, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Via Ferrata 1, I-27100, Pavia, Italy
²Vereshchagin Institute for High Pressure Physics RAS, Troitsk, Moscow, 108840, Russia
³Fersman Mineralogical Museum RAS, Moscow, 115162, Russia
⁴Natural History Museum, Department of Mineralogy and Petrography, Burgring 7, 1010 Vienna, Austria
⁵Dipartimento di Geoscienze, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via G. Gradenigo 6, I-35131 Padova, Italy
⁶Geoscience Institute, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Altenhöferalee 1, 60323 Frankfurt, Germany
Copyright Elsevier

The occurrence of shock-induced diamonds in ureilite meteorites is common and is used to constrain the history of the ureilite parent bodies. We have investigated a fragment of the Kenna ureilite by micro-X-ray diffraction, micro-Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy to characterize its carbon phases. In addition to olivine and pigeonite, within the carbon-bearing areas, we identified microdiamonds (up to about 10 μm in size), nanographite and magnetite. The shock features observed in the silicate minerals and the presence of microdiamonds and nanographite indicate that Kenna underwent a shock event with a peak pressure of at least 15 GPa. Temperatures estimated using a graphite geothermometer are close to 1180 °C. Thus, Kenna is a medium-shocked ureilite, yet it contains microdiamonds, which are typically found in highly shocked carbon-bearing meteorites, instead of the more common nanodiamonds. This can be explained by a relatively long shock event duration (in the order of 4-5 seconds) and/or by the catalytic effect of Fe-Ni alloys known to favour the crystallization of diamonds. For the first time in a ureilite, carletonmooreite with formula Ni3Si and grain size near 4-7 nm, was found. The presence of nanocrystalline carletonmooreite provides further evidence to support the hypothesis of the catalytic involvement of Fe-Ni bearing phases into the growth process of diamond from graphite during shock events in the ureilite parent body, enabling the formation of micrometer-sized diamond crystals.

Near-infrared spectroscopy of (93) Minerva with the Lowell discovery telescope + near-infrared high throughput spectrograph: More evidence for widespread primitive materials

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^1,2Maggie McAdam,^2,3Annika Gustafsson
Icarus (in Press) Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2021.114592]
¹NASA Ames Research Center, United States of America
²Northern Arizona University, United States of America
³Lowell Observatory, United States of America
Copyright Elsevier

We present rotationally resolved spectroscopy of asteroid (93) Minerva using the Lowell Discovery Telescope with the Near-Infrared High Throughput Spectrograph (NIHTS). We obtained spectroscopy over ~34% of the asteroid’s rotation period. Minerva has been shown to be spectrally similar to primitive carbonaceous chondrites (e.g., McAdam et al., 2018, Icarus 306, 32–49) indicating it has amorphous materials on its surface. The extent to which these materials appear over Minerva’s surface could provide constraints on the asteroid’s formation time and/or directly relate the asteroid to a chemical group of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Parent asteroids are thought to preserve primitive meteorites in either an outer shell of material or by avoiding parent body processing (e.g., accreting after the peak heat flux of 26Al or before the introduction of exogenous 26Al to the Solar System). These two scenarios are expected to have different properties: the no processing scenario produces an asteroid with a compositionally homogenous surface and interior while the outer shell scenario would have compositionally distinct surface and interior. Over the observed region, we report that Minerva’s surface appears to have amorphous materials, potentially indicating a homogeneous surface. However, more data are needed to determine Minerva’s compositional uniformity and which formation scenario is most appropriate.

Visible–near-infrared observations of organics and carbonates on (101955) Bennu: Classification method and search for surface context

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¹S.M.Ferrone et al. (>10)
Icarus (in Press) Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2021.114579]
¹LESIA-Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Université de Paris, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France
²Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, USA
Copyright Elsevier

The OSIRIS-REx Visible and InfraRed Spectrometer (OVIRS) onboard the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft detected ~3.4-μm absorption features indicative of carbonates and organics on near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu. We apply a Kolmogorov-Smirnov similarity test to OVIRS spectra of Bennu and laboratory spectra of minerals to categorize 3.4-μm features observed on Bennu as representing either carbonates or organics. Among the 15,585 spectra acquired by OVIRS during high-resolution (4 to 9 m/spectrum footprint) reconnaissance observations of select locations on Bennu’s surface, we find 544 spectral matches with carbonates and 245 spectral matches with organics (total of 789 high-confidence spectral matches). We map the locations of these matches and characterize features of Bennu’s surface using corresponding image data. Image data are used to quantitatively characterize the albedo within each spectrometer footprint. We find no apparent relationships between spectral classification and surface morphological expression, and we find no correlation between carbon species classification and other spectral properties such as slope or band depth. This suggests either that carbonates and organics are ubiquitous across the surface of Bennu, independent of surface features (consistent with findings from laboratory studies of carbonaceous chondrites), or that the observations do not have the spatial resolution required to resolve differences. However, we find more organic spectral matches at certain locations, including the site from which the OSIRIS-REx mission collected a sample, than at others. Higher concentrations of organics may be explained if these materials have been more recently exposed to surface alteration processes, perhaps by recent crater formation.

High-resolution observations of bright boulders on asteroid Ryugu: 2. Spectral properties

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¹Chiho Sugimoto et al. (>10)
Icarus (in Press) Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2021.114591]
¹The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
Copyright Elsevier

Many small boulders with reflectance values higher than 1.5 times the average reflectance have been found on the near-Earth asteroid 162,173 Ryugu. Based on their visible wavelength spectral differences, Tatsumi et al. (2021, Nature Astronomy, 5, doi:doi:10.1038/s41550-020-1179-z) defined two bright boulder classes: C-type and S-type. These two classifications of bright boulders have different size distributions and spectral trends. In this study, we measured the spectra of 79 bright boulders and investigated their detailed spectral properties. Analyses obtained a number of important results. First, S-type bright boulders on Ryugu have spectra that are similar to those found for two different ordinary chondrites with different initial spectra that have been experimentally space weathered the same way. This suggests that there may be two populations of S-type bright boulders on Ryugu, perhaps originating from two different impactors that hit Ryugu’s parent body. Second, the model space-weathering ages of meter-size S-type bright boulders, based on spectral change rates derived in previous experimentally irradiated ordinary chondrites, are 105–106 years, which is consistent with the crater retention age (<106 years) of the ~1-m deep surface layer on Ryugu. This agreement strongly suggests that Ryugu’s surface is extremely young, implying that the samples acquired from Ryugu’s surface should be fresh. Third, the lack of a serpentine absorption in the S-type clast embedded in one of the large brecciated boulders indicates that fragmentation and cementation that created the breccias occurred after the termination of aqueous alteration. Fourth, C-type bright boulders exhibit a continuous spectral trend similar to the heating track of low-albedo carbonaceous chondrites, such as CM and CI. Other processes, such as space weathering and grain size effects, cannot primarily account for their spectral variation. Furthermore, the distribution of the spectra of general dark boulders, which constitute >99.9% of Ryugu’s volume, is located along the trend line in slope/UV-index diagram that is occupied by C-type bright boulders. These results indicate that thermal metamorphism might be the dominant cause for the spectral variety among the C-type bright boulders on Ryugu and that general boulders on Ryugu may have experienced thermal metamorphism under a much narrower range of conditions than the C-type bright boulders. This supports the hypothesis that Ryugu’s parent body experienced uniform heating due to radiogenic energy rather than impact heating.

Heating events in the nascent solar system recorded by rare earth element isotopic fractionation in refractory inclusions

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¹Hu, J.Y. et al. (>10)
Science Advances 7, eabc2962 Link to Article [DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abc2962]
¹Origins Laboratory, University of Chicago, 5734 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, 60637, IL, United States
²Department of the Geophysical Sciences, Enrico Fermi Institute, Chicago Center for Cosmochemistry, University of Chicago, 5734 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, 60637, IL, United States