Basalts from Mare Crisium

The stratified core sample returned from Mare Crisium by the Luna 24 unmanned space probe is composed primarily of a new variety of subophitic to ophitic basalt with very low contents of TiO₂ and MgO. This consists of clinopyroxene, calcic plagioclase, olivine, and minor amounts of silica, chromite, ulvöspinel, ilmenite, troilite, apatite, and Fe-metal. Granular metabasalts have the same bulk composition, but mineral phases exhibit less compositional variation. Fine-grained impact melts have similar compositions and are apparently derived from these basalts. We conclude that the basalts, which are chemically distinct from the very-low-titanium basalts found elsewhere on the Moon, represent the local surface flows of Mare Crisium.Sparse fragments of an olivine vitrophyre that is low in TiO₂ but high in MgO and approaches the composition of the Apollo 15 green glasses may be derived from patches of dark mantling materials 20 km from the landing site.Now at Department of Geology, University of California at Davis, Davis, Calif., U.S.A.Now at Department of Geological Sciences, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tenn., U.S.A.     

Luna 24 ferrobasalt as a low-Mg primary melt

Luna 24 very-low titanium (VLT) ferrobasalts, metabasalts, brown glasses and impact melts form a tight compositional cluster with no gradation to other groupings postulated for the Luna 24 core components. This suggests that the Luna 24 VLT ferrobasalt was extruded as a liquid of its own composition and was not derived by fractional crystallization from a more magnesian parent in a surface flow. Furthermore, the characteristics of the core lithologies are not easily visualized as components of such a differentiated flow, e.g. brown glasses. Gravitative settling models purporting to demonstrate the validity of the flow differentiation model are merely permissive.Subsurface fractionation requires that plagioclase, not olivine, be the liquidus phase.The high-Mg component in the Luna 24 core can be constrained, though not identified, chemically, and it has neither the major element, trace element, isotopic, nor mineralogical characteristics required of a possible parent to the Luna 24 VLT ferrobasalt. Thus models of fractionation lack a physical expression of the less differentiated compositions, contrary to the belief that the high-Mg component in the core is the parent material.The Luna 24 VLT ferrobasalt is probably a primary low-Mg melt from a plagioclase-bearing source region, and may have undergone little or no fractionation prior to eruption. Such a model is compatible with, and suggested by, chemical and experimental data. Caution against postulating that all Mg-poor melts are fractionated products, based on terrestrial models, is advised. The terrestrial oceanic situation of primary melts with similar Mg/Fe is probably not valid for the Moon.     

A New Mathematical Formulation for Underground Cut-off Grade Determination in the Presence of Pre-concentration Systems

Natural Resources Research - The mining industry is facing increasingly lower grades, which intensifies the need to reduce costs. The depletion of orebodies close to the surface has pushed the...     

Lunar anorthosite 60025, the petrogenesis of lunar anorthosites,and the composition of the Moon

Systematic variations of the mineral chemistry of ferroan anorthosite 60025, which is probably a mixture of closely related materials, suggest that lunar anorthosites formed by strong fractional crystallization and near-perfect adcumulate growth, without trapping liquid. The parent liquid for the most primitive samples was saturated with olivine, plagioclase, pigeonite, and chromite, and evolved to one saturated with plagioclase, pigeonite, high-Ca pyroxene, and ilmenite. The parent liquid also had a very low Na₂O content, and combined with strong fractional crystallization this explains the steep trend of anorthosites on an Mg1 (atomic 100 × Mg/(Mg + Fe)) v. An diagram. The mineral and chemical data for other anorthosites are consistent with such a model. Near-perfect adcumulation can occur if growth takes place at the crystal-liquid interface without the physical accumulation of crystals grown elsewhere, and is encouraged by the shifts in phase boundaries with pressure.Anorthosites are probably the remnants of a crust floating on, and crystallizing at the surface of, a magma ocean originally of bulk Moon composition. Mineralogical and trace element data suggest that the parental liquid for the most primitive anorthosites had previously crystallized no plagioclase and some but perhaps very little pyroxene. Hence the bulk Moon appears to be similar to that proposed by Ringwood (1976) but to have even lower alkalis, a subchondritic $\text{Ca}\text{Al}$ ratio, and REE abundances and patterns close to chondritic. The mare basalt sources are not directly complementary to the feldspathic crust, because experimental and trace element data indicate that they are too magnesian and contain too much high-Ca pyroxene. Other crustal rocks, such as the Mg-suite samples, are not closely related to anorthosites; in addition to their chemical differences they have a different crystallization sequence: ol → plag → px, in contrast with the ol → px → plag inferred for anorthosite parental liquid evolution.     

Simulations of Turbulent Flow Over Complex Terrain Using an Immersed-Boundary Method

We present an immersed-boundary method to simulate high-Reynolds-number turbulent flow over the complex terrain of Askervein and Bolund Hills under neutrally-stratified conditions. We reconstruct both the velocity and the eddy-viscosity fields in the terrain-normal direction to produce turbulent stresses as would be expected from the application of a surface-parametrization scheme based on Monin–Obukhov similarity theory. We find that it is essential to be consistent in the underlying assumptions for the velocity reconstruction and the eddy-viscosity relation to produce good results. To this end, we reconstruct the tangential component of the velocity field using a logarithmic velocity profile and adopt the mixing-length model in the near-surface turbulence model. We use a linear interpolation to reconstruct the normal component of the velocity to enforce the impermeability condition. Our approach works well for both the Askervein and Bolund Hills when the flow is attached to the surface, but shows slight disagreement in regions of flow recirculation, despite capturing the flow reversal.