Evaporation of nebular fines during chondrule formation

Studies of matrix in primitive chondrites provide our only detailed information about the fine fraction (diameter <2 μm) of solids in the solar nebula. A minor fraction of the fines, the presolar grains, offers information about the kinds of materials present in the molecular cloud that spawned the Solar System. Although some researchers have argued that chondritic matrix is relatively unaltered presolar matter, meteoritic chondrules bear witness to multiple high-temperature events each of which would have evaporated those fines that were inside the high-temperature fluid. Because heat is mainly transferred into the interior of chondrules by conduction, the surface temperatures of chondrules were probably at or above 2000 K. In contrast, the evaporation of mafic silicates in a canonical solar nebula occurs at around 1300 K and FeO-rich, amorphous, fine matrix evaporates at still lower temperatures, perhaps near 1200 K. Thus, during chondrule formation, the temperature of the placental bath was probably >700 K higher than the evaporation temperatures of nebular fines. The scale of chondrule forming events is not known. The currently popular shock models have typical scales of about 105 km. The scale of nebular lightning is less well defined, but is certainly much smaller, perhaps in the range 1 to 1000 m. In both cases the temperature pulses were long enough to evaporate submicrometer nebular fines. This interpretation disagrees with common views that meteoritic matrix is largely presolar in character and CI-chondrite-like in composition. It is inevitable that presolar grains (both those recognized by their anomalous isotopic compositions and those having solar-like compositions) that were within the hot fluid would also have evaporated. Chondrule formation appears to have continued down to the temperatures at which planetesimals formed, possibly around 250 K. At temperatures >600 K, the main form of C is gaseous CO. Although the conversion of CO to CH4 at lower temperatures is kinetically inhibited, radiation associated with chondrule formation would have accelerated the conversion. There is now evidence that an appreciable fraction of the nanodiamonds previously held to be presolar were actually formed in the solar nebula. Industrial condensation of diamonds from mixtures of CH4 and H2 implies that high nebular CH4/CO ratios favored nanodiamond formation. A large fraction of chondritic insoluble organic matter may have formed in related processes. At low nebular temperatures appreciable water should have been incorporated into the smoke that condensed following dust (and some chondrule) evaporation. If chondrule formation continued down to temperatures as low as 250 K this process could account for the water concentration observed in primitive chondrites such as LL3.0 and CO3.0 chondrites. Higher H2O contents in CM and CI chondrites may reflect asteroidal redistribution. In some chondrite groups (e.g., CR) the Mg/Si ratio of matrix material is appreciably (30%) lower than that of chondrules but the bulk Mg/Si ratio is roughly similar to the CI or solar ratio. This has been interpreted as a kind of closed-system behavior sometimes called “complementarity.” This leads to the conclusion that nebular fines were efficiently agglomerated. Its importance, however is obscured by the observation that bulk Mg/Si ratios in ordinary and enstatite chondrites are much lower than those in carbonaceous chondrites, and thus that complementarity did not hold throughout the solar nebula. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.