Infiltration Metasomatism of Cumulates by Intrusive Magma Replenishment: the Wavy Horizon, Isle of Rum, Scotland

The Eastern Layered Intrusion of the Rum Layered Suite comprisespaired peridotite and allivalite (troctolite and gabbro) layersforming 16 macro-rhythmic units. Whereas the majority of thesemacro-units are believed to have formed by a process of crystal–liquiddifferentiation involving successive accumulation of crystalsfrom multiple picritic replenishments of the chamber, the Unit9 peridotite is interpreted as a layer-parallel picrite intrusion.Closely correlated with this discontinuous peridotite body isa distinctive feature generally known as the Wavy Horizon, whichdivides the overlying allivalite into a lower troctolite andan upper gabbro along a well-defined undulating contact. Wepropose that the Wavy Horizon is a metasomatic feature formedconsequent to the removal of clinopyroxene from an originalgabbroic mush. Foundering of the mush into the picritic sillresulted in the replacement of the original interstitial liquidby one saturated only in olivine (± plagioclase). Progressivethrough-flow of this liquid resulted in the stripping out ofclinopyroxene from the lower parts of the allivalite. We interpretthe Wavy Horizon as a reaction front, representing the pointat which the invading liquid became saturated in clinopyroxene.The distinctive pyroxene-enriched zone immediately above theWavy Horizon could have formed when mixing of the interstitialliquids on either side of the reaction front formed a supercooledliquid oversaturated in pyroxene, as a result of the curvatureof the olivine–plagioclase–clinopyroxene cotectic.The presence of many such approximately layer-parallel features,defined by differences in pyroxene content, in the Eastern LayeredIntrusion of Rum suggests that such an infiltration–reactionprocess was not unique to Unit 9. KEY WORDS: cumulate; infiltration metasomatism; Rum; Eastern Layered Intrusion     

Permian

Summary Late in the Carboniferous Period or early in the Permian ice covered much of Tasmania (Fig. 30b). The sub‐Permian surface had a relief of several thousand feet with particularly low areas near Wynyard and Point Hibbs and high areas near Cradle Mountain, Devonport, Deloraine, Wylds Crag and Ida Bay and a peninsula in eastern Tasmania (Fig. 30a).

The glaciers from an ice centre north‐west of Zeehan diverged about a higher area near Cradle Mountain. One tongue occupied a deep valley near Wynyard and a lobe fanned out south of the high area to occupy parts of northern and central Tasmania and to override some parts of the east coast peninsula.

West of Maydena the ice scoured shell beds and dumped the shell fragments in the till on the Styx Range. Thus the base of the ice may well have been below sea‐level. Carey and Ahmad (1961) suggested that the Wynyard Tillite was deposited below a “wet‐base” glacier. David (1908, p. 278) suggested deposition from “land ice in the form of a piedmont or of an ice‐sheet” but that near Wynyard the ice came down very close to, if not actually to, sea‐level. The extent of the glaciation and the distribution of erratics of western Tasmanian origin in eastern Tasmania make it seem likely that either a piedmont glacier or an ice‐sheet rather than mountain glaciation was involved.

Following retreat of the glaciers the sea covered the till, probably to a considerable depth, eustatic rise of sea‐level being much more rapid than isostatic readjustment.

The Quamby Group is underlain by or passes laterally into thin conglomerates and sandstones in a number of places, but most of the group appears to be of deep water, partially barred basin origin. Marine oil shales accumulated close to islands. Shallowing of the sea during deposition of the upper part of the Quamby Group seems to be indicated by the fauna and increasing sandiness in marginal areas. Instability in the source areas is shown by the presence of turbidity current deposits in the higher parts of the group. The Golden Valley Group, of Upper Sakmarian and perhaps Lower Artinskian age, was deposited in a shallower sea than the Quamby Group but the deposits are more extensive along the east coast peninsula and on the flanks of the Cradle Mountain island. This anomaly may be explained if the rate of deposition exceeded the rate of rise of sea‐level. The sediments of the Golden Valley Group became finer‐grained upwards in most parts of Tasmania probably indicating reduction in relief of the source area. Some instability is indicated by turbidity current deposits. Uplift of source areas in north‐western Tasmania early in Artinskian time resulted in the spreading of sand over the shallow silts of the Golden Valley Group onto the east coast peninsula and over the Cradle Mountain area. The sand formed a wide coastal plain containing lakes and swamps and the sea was restricted to a small gulf in southern Tasmania during the deposition of the lower part of the Mersey Group. During deposition of this group the sea rose once to form a long, narrow gulf extending as far north as Port Sorell and then retreated. This inundation resulted in the development of two cyclothems in many parts of Tasmania.

A little later in Lower Artinskian time the sea rose and covered most of Tasmania except perhaps the far north‐west. This wide transgression probably resulted from down‐warping as an eustatic rise in sea‐level would be expected to produce thickest deposition over the old gulf in southern Tasmania and along the axis of Mersey Group inundation but the zone of thickest Cascades Group crosses these at a high angle. During deposition of the Cascades Group marine life became very abundant in the shallow sea over which a few icebergs floated. During the Artinskian tectonic instability increased as shown by the increasing number of turbidites in the upper part of the Grange Mudstone and the lower part of the Malbina Formation. The sea became less extensive and the source areas in north‐western and north‐eastern Tasmania were uplifted. The zone of thickest deposition of the Malbina Formation trended north‐north‐westerly. The rapid succession of turbidity currents killed the benthonic fauna and it was only during deposition of the upper part of the formation possibly in Lower Kungurian time that life became abundant again in the Hobart area. The sea spread a little over the east coast peninsula and further instability is recorded in the Risdon Sandstone. The resulting turbidity currents killed the benthonic fauna and it never became properly established again in any part of Tasmania during the Permian. A wide shallow sea covered much of Tasmania and was bordered by low source areas during deposition of the Ferntree Group. The axis of greatest thickness had an almost meridional trend and lay west of that of the Malbina Formation. Late in the Permian, probably in the Tartarian, rejuvenation of the source areas, particularly in western Tasmania, and withdrawal of the sea, resulted in deposition of sands and carbonaceous silts of the Cygnet Coal Measures. The zone of greatest thickness was almost parallel to but west of that of the Ferntree Group.

The thickness of the Permian System and the sheet‐like character of many of the members and formations suggest shelf rather than geosynclinal deposition. The average rate of deposition was of the order of 1 ft. in ten thousand years (about 0–003 mm./annum). However, the sediments differ markedly from those on stable shelves in that many of them are poorly‐sorted. Some of the poor sorting may be attributed to deposition from drifting icebergs but some is due to tectonic instability.

Uplift and downwarping and movement of zones of maximum thickness have been deduced above and it is probable that the tectonic instability started as early as Lower Artinskian and it may have started during Sakmarian (upper part of Quamby Group). Maximum instability seems to have occurred in Middle or Upper Artinskian time (Malbina Formation) and it is probably significant that this was a time of considerable orogenic movement in New South Wales (part of the Hunter‐Bowen Orogeny, Osborne, 1950). Progressive westward movement of zones of maximum thickness of units in Upper Permian time seems to have occurred and this again is reminiscent of the situation at the time in New South Wales (Voisey, 1959, p. 201) but seems to have started later. Uplift and development of a major synclinal structure with a trend approximately north‐north‐westerly occurred late in Permian time.     

PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATION OF MAXIMUM KURTOSIS PHASE ESTIMATION1

Methods of minimum entropy deconvolution (MED) try to take advantage of the non-Gaussian distribution of primary reflectivities in the design of deconvolution operators. Of these, Wiggins’(1978) original method performs as well as any in practice. However, we present examples to show that it does not provide a reliable means of deconvolving seismic data: its operators are not stable and, instead of whitening the data, they often band-pass filter it severely. The method could be more appropriately called maximum kurtosis deconvolution since the varimax norm it employs is really an estimate of kurtosis. Its poor performance is explained in terms of the relation between the kurtosis of a noisy band-limited seismic trace and the kurtosis of the underlying reflectivity sequence, and between the estimation errors in a maximum kurtosis operator and the data and design parameters. The scheme put forward by Fourmann in 1984, whereby the data are corrected by the phase rotation that maximizes their kurtosis, is a more practical method. This preserves the main attraction of MED, its potential for phase control, and leaves trace whitening and noise control to proven conventional methods. The correction can be determined without actually applying a whole series of phase shifts to the data. The application of the method is illustrated by means of practical and synthetic examples, and summarized by rules derived from theory. In particular, the signal-dominated bandwidth must exceed a threshold for the method to work at all and estimation of the phase correction requires a considerable amount of data. Kurtosis can estimate phase better than other norms that are misleadingly declared to be more efficient by theory based on full-band, noise-free data.     

Measurement of Al26 in stone meteorites and its use in the derivation of orbital elements

The Al²⁶ activity has been measured by gamma-ray coincidence spectrometry in a total of 30 stony meteorites (13 bronzite, 13 hypersthene, 1 carbonaceous and 1 enstatite chondrite, and 2 achondrites). The measured Al²⁶ content has been compared with calculated values based on the method developed by Lavrukhina and Ustinova (1972a, 1972b), which takes account of the modulation of the galactic cosmic ray intensity along the meteorite orbit due to solar magnetic activity. The predictions have been modified empirically to allow for the difference in chemical composition between H- and L-chondrites. Comparison of the measured value with that predicted in the absence of solar modulation permits the estimation of the aphelion of the orbit of the meteorite. The great majority of the derived aphelia lie within the range 2.05–2.45 AU. While this result must be treated with considerable reserve owing to the uncertainties associated with the model, it is consistent with recent data from photometric observations of the asteroid belt.     

Ichnology of Bhuban and Boka Bil Formations,oligocene-miocene deposits of Manipur Western Hill,Northeast India

Oligocene-Miocene deposits of Bhuban and Boka Bil Formations, Surma Group, Manipur Western Hill consist of well preserved ichnofossil assemblages. These formations are represented by eight lithofacies such as Massive sandstone (Sm), Rippled marked argillaceous sandstone (Sr), Wavy laminated sandstone-siltstone-silty shale (Sw), Laminated shale (Fl), Massive mudstone (Fm), Trough cross-bedded sandstone (St), Lenticular laminated sandstonesiltstonesilty shale (Sll) and Laminated to massive sandstone-siltstone (Ssc). Fifteen ichnospecies were identified, which further categories into Skolithos, Cruziana, and Skolithos/Cruziana ichnofacies. Overall distribution pattern and behavioural nature of the ichnoassemblage and sedimentological attributes suggests that the sediments of Bhuban and Boka Bil Formations were deposited under frequent fluctuating sea level, moderate to strong energy condition, subtidal to lower intertidal environment, rich in organic nutrients.     

Element sets for high-order Poincaré mapping of perturbed Keplerian motion

The propagation and Poincaré mapping of perturbed Keplerian motion is a key topic in Celestial Mechanics and Astrodynamics, e.g., to study the stability of orbits or design bounded relative trajectories. The high-order transfer map (HOTM) method enables efficient mapping of perturbed Keplerian orbits using the high-order Taylor expansion of a Poincaré or stroboscopic map. The HOTM is only accurate close to the expansion point and therefore the number of revolutions for which the map is accurate tends to be limited. The proper selection of coordinates is of key importance for improving the performance of the HOTM method. In this paper, we investigate the use of different element sets for expressing the high-order map in order to find the coordinates that perform best in terms of accuracy. A new set of elements is introduced that enables extremely accurate mapping of the state, even for high eccentricities and higher-order zonal perturbations. Finally, the high-order map is shown to be very useful for the determination and study of fixed points and center manifolds of Poincaré maps.     

Template-based classification of SDSS-<Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">GALEX</Emphasis> point sources

We have classified a sample of 37,492 objects from SDSS into QSOs, galaxies and stars using photometric data over five wave bands (u, g, r, i and z) and UV GALEX data over two wave bands (near-UV and far-UV) based on a template fitting method. The advantage of this method of classification is that it does not require any spectroscopic data and hence the objects for which spectroscopic data is not available can also be studied using this technique. In this study, we have found that our method is consistent by spectroscopic methods given that their UV information is available. Our study shows that the UV colours are especially important for separating quasars and stars, as well as spiral and starburst galaxies. Thus it is evident that the UV bands play a crucial role in the classification and characterization of astronomical objects that emit over a wide range of wavelengths, but especially for those that are bright at UV. We have achieved the efficiency of 89% for the QSOs, 63% for the galaxies and 84% for the stars. This classification is also found to be in agreement with the emission line diagnostic diagrams.     

Umbral oscillations and penumbral waves in Hα

We present examples of umbral oscillations observed on Big Bear H filtergram movies and investigate the relation between umbral oscillations and running penumbral waves occurring in the same sunspot. Umbral oscillations near the center of the umbra are probably physically independent of the penumbral waves because the period of these umbral oscillations (150 s) is shorter than the penumbral wave period (270 s) but not a harmonic. We also report dark puffs which emerge from the edge of the umbra and move outward across the penumbra, and which have the same period as the running penumbral waves. We interpret these dark puffs to be the extension of chromospheric umbral oscillations at the edge of the umbra. It is suggested that the dark puffs and the running penumbral waves have a common source: photospheric oscillations just inside the umbra.     

Geomorphic characteristics of a bedrock river inferred from drainage quantification,longitudinal profile,knickzone identification and concavity analysis: a DEM-based study

An examination of river channels has ability to provide substantial information regarding the geomorphic characteristics, control of lithology, tectonic uplift and geomorphic evolution during the geological past of an area. In this paper, a detailed study of geomorphic and structural investigation has been carried out for Pravara basin, Maharashtra, with the help of 90-m resolution SRTM DEM and geospatial techniques. Drainage network analysis performed in this paper demonstrates the general geomorphic characteristics, while the analysis of longitudinal profile synthesises lithological control over Pravara basin. Pravara is a 6th order drainage basin, encompassing an area of 2637 km². Bifurcation ratio reveals low to moderate structural control. Due to the hard rock lithology, the drainage density and stream frequency are low, and it indicates higher permeability in the sub-surface layers. The shape parameters denote that Pravara is highly elongated and it is easier to control floods in this basin. Relief parameters show very steep slope and higher vulnerability to the slope failure in some areas. Upstream of Pravara river has shown that series of breaks and knickzones indicate active erosion and acute lithological control on the channel. Major breaks are observed only in the main channel whereas in two major tributaries, no such breaks found, instead these tributaries are characterised by several knickzones which indicate regional variation in the lithological physiognomies. Different lithological stages on knickpoint and channel incision substantiate rejuvenation of Pravara river in several phases during geological past. The geospatial methodology carried out in this study can be pragmatic elsewhere around this world to recognise the geomorphic appearances and lithological control of a drainage basin.