Noble gases in ten Nullarbor chondrites: Exposure ages, terrestrial ages, and weathering effects

Terrestrial Ages of Meteorites

The terrestrial age, or the terrestrial residence time of a meteorite, together with its exposure history provides us with useful insight into the history of the meteorite. It is easy to observe that stony meteorites can weather quickly in humid environments. However, we find that large numbers of meteorites found in semi-arid and arid environments can survive for much longer times. Meteorites ...

Solar Noble Gases in Enstatite Chondrites and Implications for the Formation of the Terrestrial Planets

Introduction: In a companion abstract [1], we report evidence for tiny amounts of most likely primordial noble gases with solar-like elemental and isotopic composition admixed to Q-type primordial noble gases in an E chondrite. Here, we discuss possible implications of this finding for terrestrial planet formation. The genetic relation of the noble gases in planetary bodies to those in the Sun,...

Noble Gases in Terrestrial Diamonds: Preliminary Results

Motivated by exciting, but puzzling, noble gas results in terrestrial diamonds (e.g. high He/He ratios close to the solar value from industrial class diamonds [Ozima et al., 1983] and low 40ArPAr [ = 189] from an Arkansas, U.S.A., diamond [Melton and Giardini, 1980]), we undertook the study of noble gases in diamonds from different locations. Although this is ongoing research, we can report pre...

Noble Gases in the Nwa 852/801 Cr2 Chondrites

Introduction: North West Africa (NWA) 852 and 801 are classified as CR2 chondrites [1-2]. The two meteorites contain relatively large chondrules (1-2 mm in diameter), FeNi metal, and dark inclusions composed of serpentine and olivine. We measured noble gases in the two meteorites with stepwise heating, which facilitates decomposition of noble gas components with different origins and trapping s...

Terrestrial Ages of Some Meteorites from Oman