Petrology and origin of amoeboid olivine aggregates in CR chondrites

Abstract— Amoeboid olivine aggregates (AOAs) are irregularly shaped, fine‐grained aggregates of olivine and Ca, Al‐rich minerals and are important primitive components of CR chondrites. The AOAs in CR chondrites contain FeNi metal, and some AOAs contain Mn‐rich forsterite with up to 0.7 MnO and Mn:Fe ratios greater than one. Additionally, AOAs in the CR chondrites do not contain secondary phases (nepheline and fayalitic olivine) that are found in AOAs in some CV chondrites. The AOAs in CR chondrites record a complex petrogenetic history that included nebular gas‐solid condensation, reaction of minerals with the nebular gas, small degrees of melting, and sintering of the assemblage. A condensation origin for the Mn‐rich forsterite is proposed. The Mn‐rich forsterite found in IDPs, unequilibrated ordinary chondrite matrix, and AOAs in CR chondrites may have had a similar origin. A type A calcium, aluminum‐rich inclusion (CAI) with an AOA attached to its Wark‐Lovering rim is also described. This discovery reveals a temporal relationship between AOAs and type A inclusions. Additionally, a thin layer of forsterite is present as part of the Wark‐Lovering rim, revealing the crystallization of olivine at the end stages of Wark‐Lovering rim formation. The Ca, Al‐rich nodules in the AOAs may be petrogenetically related to the Ca, Al‐rich minerals in Wark‐Lovering rims on type A CAIs. AOAs are chondrite components that condensed during the final stage of Wark‐Lovering rim formation but, in general, were temporally, spatially, or kinetically isolated from reacting with the nebula vapor during condensation of the lower temperature minerals that were commonly present as chondrule precursors.     

UV Leo: The Binary with the Two Suns

BV light curves of the eclipsing binary UV Leo obtained at the Kryonerion Astronomical Station of the National Observatory of Athens, Greece, are analyzed. The analysis is based on a Roche configuration with two spots on the secondary surface. The elements of the two components of the system are calculated and the spot characteristics are given.     

Line forming regions in active galaxies and their nuclei

The spectra of active galaxies and their nuclei are rich in emission and absorption line features. A major aim of present research is the development of self-consistent hydrodynamic models for the production of the line-forming regions. We here review such modelling and stress the central role played by shock phenomena induced by winds and explosions on scales ranging from the circumstellar to the intergalactic.     

Characterization of soil's structural crust by spectral reflectance in the SWIR region (1.2–2.5 μm)

Structural crust is a thin layer formed on the soil surface after a rainstorm. The crust is the result of a physical segregation and rearrangement of soil particles in a way that affects some of the soil properties, such as infiltration, runoff and soil erosion. In practice, there is no rapid, in situ method for monitoring, assessing and mapping crust intensity and quality. In this study, a controlled spectral investigation of the structural crust across the NIR–SWIR spectral region was conducted on three selected Israeli soils, to study the potential of reflectance radiation to detect structural crust in soils. Two major factors served as the driving forces for this study: (1) there is no valid method for in situ assessment of the crust's characteristics in the agriculture field, and (2) the crust might bias thematic remote sensing of soils, because the thin layer of crust blocks photon–matter interaction, which represents the relevant soil body. Through the use of a laboratory rainfall simulator and a sensitive spectrometer, it was revealed that for three selected soils, significant spectral differences occurred between the crust and its bulk soil. The spectral information was found to be related to changes in particle size distribution and texture at the surface of the soil. This conclusion was based on indications of absorption of OH in clay lattice, OH in adsorbed water and CO₃ in carbonates. It was concluded that the structural crust is a phenomenon that should not be ignored by remote-sensing users. In fact, in the field of agriculture, the spectral properties of crust can be used as tools for estimating the crust's intensity.     

About Darcy's law in non-Galilean frame

This paper is aimed towards investigating the filtration law of an incompressible viscous Newtonian fluid through a rigid non-inertial porous medium (e.g. a porous medium placed in a centrifuge basket). The filtration law is obtained by upscaling the flow equations at the pore scale. The upscaling technique is the homogenization method of multiple scale expansions which rigorously gives the macroscopic behaviour and the effective properties without any prerequisite on the form of the macroscopic equations. The derived filtration law is similar to Darcy's law, but the tensor of permeability presents the following remarkable properties: it depends upon the angular velocity of the porous matrix, it verifies Hall–Onsager's relationship and it is a non-symmetric tensor. We thus deduce that, under rotation, an isotropic porous medium leads to a non-isotropic effective permeability. In this paper, we present the results of numerical simulations of the flow through rotating porous media. This allows us to highlight the deviations of the flow due to Coriolis effects at both the microscopic scale (i.e. the pore scale), and the macroscopic scale (i.e. the sample scale). The above results confirm that for an isotropic medium, phenomenological laws already proposed in the literature fails at reproducing three-dimensional Coriolis effects in all types of pores geometry. We show that Coriolis effects may lead to significant variations of the permeability measured during centrifuge tests when the inverse Ekman number Ek⁻¹ is 𝒪(1). These variations are estimated to be less than 5% if Ek⁻¹<0.2, which is the case of classical geotechnical centrifuge tests. We finally conclude by showing that available experimental data from tests carried out in centrifuges are not sufficient to determining the effective tensor of permeability of rotating porous media. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inverted echo sounder measurement of dynamic height through an ENSOcycle in the central equatorial Pacific

A four-year record from an inverted echo sounder deployed near Palmyra Island at 6°N in the central Pacific Ocean is compared with a simultaneous record of subsurface pressure from this island lagoon. A factor m, converting round-trip acoustic travel time to surface dynamic height relative to a deep pressure level, was estimated from the ratio of the spectra of the two records in the energetic synoptic oscillation band. Year-to-year variation in m was not statistically significant. For the overall record, m was found to be -70±8 dynamic m/s, where the error bounds represent a 90% confidence interval. This is consistent with first-baroclinic-mode excitation     

A stepwise method for determining the number of component distributions in a mixture

This paper considers the problem of estimatingm, the number of components in a finite mixture of distributions from a parametric family. A step-up procedure using the bootstrap method is proposed. Some properties of the procedure are illustrated with simulation studies. An example of the method, applied to orientation of beach clasts, is given.     

Exposure history of the Torino meteorite

Abstract— We determined He, Ne, Ar, ¹⁰Be, ²⁶Al, ³⁶Cl, and ¹⁴C concentrations, as well as cosmic-ray track densities and halogen concentrations in different specimens of the H6 chondrite Torino, in order to constrain its exposure history to cosmic radiation. The Torino meteoroid had a radius of ～20 cm and travelled in interplanetary space for 2.5–10 Ma. Earlier, Torino was part of a larger body. The smallest possible precursor had a radius of 55 cm and a journey through space longer than ～65 Ma. If the first-stage exposure took place in a body with a radius of >3 m or in the parent asteroid, then it lasted nearly 300 Ma. The example of Torino shows that it is easy to underestimate first-stage exposure ages when constructing two-stage histories.