Nitrogen solubility in basaltic melt. Part I. Effect of oxygen fugacity

The role of the oxygen fugacity on the incorporation of nitrogen in basaltic magmas has been investigated using one atmosphere high temperature equilibration of tholeiitic-like compositions under controlled nitrogen and oxygen partial pressures in the [C-N-O] system. Nitrogen was extracted with a CO₂ laser under high vacuum and analyzed by static mass spectrometry. Over a redox range of 18 oxygen fugacity log units, this study shows that the incorporation of nitrogen in silicate melts follows two different behaviors. For log fO₂ values between −0.7 and −10.7 (the latter corresponding to IW − 1.3), nitrogen dissolves as a N₂ molecule into cavities of the silicate network (physical solubility). Nitrogen presents a constant solubility (Henry’s) coefficient of 2.21 ± 0.53 × 10⁻⁹ mol g⁻¹ atm⁻¹ at 1425°C, identical within uncertainties to the solubility of argon. Further decrease in the oxygen fugacity (log fO₂ between −10.7 and −18 corresponding to the range from IW − 1.3 to IW − 8.3) results in a drastic increase of the solubility of nitrogen by up to 5 orders of magnitude as nitrogen becomes chemically bounded with atoms of the silicate melt network (chemical solubility). The present results strongly suggest that under reducing conditions nitrogen dissolves in silicate melts as N³⁻ species rather than as CN⁻ cyanide radicals. The nitrogen content of a tholeiitic magma equilibrated with N₂ is computed from thermochemical processing of our data set as

     

THERMAP: a mid-infrared spectro-imager for space missions to small bodies in the inner solar system

We present THERMAP, a mid-infrared spectro-imager for space missions to small bodies in the inner solar system, developed in the framework of the MarcoPolo-R asteroid sample return mission. THERMAP is very well suited to characterize the surface thermal environment of a NEO and to map its surface composition. The instrument has two channels, one for imaging and one for spectroscopy: it is both a thermal camera with full 2D imaging capabilities and a slit spectrometer. THERMAP takes advantage of the recent technological developments of uncooled microbolometer arrays, sensitive in the mid-infrared spectral range. THERMAP can acquire thermal images (8–18 μm) of the surface and perform absolute temperature measurements with a precision better than 3.5 K above 200 K. THERMAP can acquire mid-infrared spectra (8–16 μm) of the surface with a spectral resolution Δλ of 0.3 μm. For surface temperatures above 350 K, spectra have a signal-to-noise ratio >60 in the spectral range 9–13 μm where most emission features occur.     

MarcoPolo-R near earth asteroid sample return mission

MarcoPolo-R is a sample return mission to a primitive Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) proposed in collaboration with NASA. It will rendezvous with a primitive NEA, scientifically characterize it at multiple scales, and return a unique sample to Earth unaltered by the atmospheric entry process or terrestrial weathering. MarcoPolo-R will return bulk samples (up to 2?kg) from an organic-rich binary asteroid to Earth for laboratory analyses, allowing us to: explore the origin of planetary materials and initial stages of habitable planet formation; identify and characterize the organics and volatiles in a primitive asteroid; understand the unique geomorphology, dynamics and evolution of a binary NEA. This project is based on the previous Marco Polo mission study, which was selected for the Assessment Phase of the first round of Cosmic Vision. Its scientific rationale was highly ranked by ESA committees and it was not selected only because the estimated cost was higher than the allotted amount for an M class mission. The cost of MarcoPolo-R will be reduced to within the ESA medium mission budget by collaboration with APL (John Hopkins University) and JPL in the NASA program for coordination with ESA’s Cosmic Vision Call. The baseline target is a binary asteroid (175706) 1996 FG3, which offers a very efficient operational and technical mission profile. A binary target also provides enhanced science return. The choice of this target will allow new investigations to be performed more easily than at a single object, and also enables investigations of the fascinating geology and geophysics of asteroids that are impossible at a single object. Several launch windows have been identified in the time-span 2020–2024. A number of other possible primitive single targets of high scientific interest have been identified covering a wide range of possible launch dates. The baseline mission scenario of MarcoPolo-R to 1996 FG3 is as follows: a single primary spacecraft provided by ESA, carrying the Earth Re-entry Capsule, sample acquisition and transfer system provided by NASA, will be launched by a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from Kourou into GTO and using two space segment stages. Two similar missions with two launch windows, in 2021 and 2022 and for both sample return in 2029 (with mission duration of 7 and 8?years), have been defined. Earlier or later launches, in 2020 or 2024, also offer good opportunities. All manoeuvres are carried out by a chemical propulsion system. MarcoPolo-R takes advantage of three industrial studies completed as part of the previous Marco Polo mission (see ESA/SRE (2009)3, Marco Polo Yellow Book) and of the expertise of the consortium led by Dr. A.F. Cheng (PI of the NASA NEAR Shoemaker mission) of the JHU-APL, including JPL, NASA ARC, NASA LaRC, and MIT.     

The 2010 European Venus Explorer (EVE) mission proposal

The European Venus Explorer (EVE) mission described in this paper was proposed in December 2010 to ESA as an ‘M-class’ mission under the Cosmic Vision programme. It consists of a single balloon platform floating in the middle of the main convective cloud layer of Venus at an altitude of 55?km, where temperatures and pressures are benign (～25°C and ～0.5 bar). The balloon float lifetime would be at least 10 Earth days, long enough to guarantee at least one full circumnavigation of the planet. This offers an ideal platform for the two main science goals of the mission: study of the current climate through detailed characterization of cloud-level atmosphere, and investigation of the formation and evolution of Venus, through careful measurement of noble gas isotopic abundances. These investigations would provide key data for comparative planetology of terrestrial planets in our solar system and beyond.     

European Venus Explorer (EVE): an in-situ mission to Venus

The European Venus Explorer (EVE) mission was proposed to the European Space Agency in 2007, as an M-class mission under the Cosmic Vision Programme. Although it has not been chosen in the 2007 selection round for programmatic reasons, the EVE mission may serve as a useful reference point for future missions, so it is described here. It consists of one balloon platform floating at an altitude of 50–60 km, one descent probe provided by Russia, and an orbiter with a polar orbit which will relay data from the balloon and descent probe, and perform science observations. The balloon type preferred for scientific goals is one which oscillates in altitude through the cloud deck. To achieve this flight profile, the balloon envelope contains a phase change fluid, which results in a flight profile which oscillates in height. The nominal balloon lifetime is 7 days—enough for one full circumnavigation of the planet. The descent probe’s fall through the atmosphere takes 60 min, followed by 30 min of operation on the surface. The key measurement objectives of EVE are: (1) in situ measurement from the balloon of noble gas abundances and stable isotope ratios, to study the record of the evolution of Venus; (2) in situ balloon-borne measurement of cloud particle and gas composition, and their spatial variation, to understand the complex cloud-level chemistry; (3) in situ measurements of environmental parameters and winds (from tracking of the balloon) for one rotation around the planet, to understand atmospheric dynamics and radiative balance in this crucial region. The portfolio of key measurements is complemented by the Russian descent probe, which enables the investigation of the deep atmosphere and surface.     

Results from microseismic monitoring,conventional instrumentation,and tomography surveys in the creation and thinning of a burst-prone sill pillar

Located in northern Québec, the Lac Shortt Mine was a small gold mine consisting of a thin subvertical orebody which was mined in three main phases. High stress and rockbursting conditions were experienced when ore was extracted in the upper zone between the surface and a depth of 500 metres during the first two phases of mining. Severe rockbursts were experienced in late 1989 near the shaft and in the footwall development following a deepening of the mine shaft to a depth of 830 m and partial development of footwall drift access for the third phase of mining (the mining of the lower zone starting at a depth of 830 m moving upward toward a depth of 500 m). A 16-channel Electrolab MP250 microseismic system, with a Queen's University Full-Waveform piggy-back system, was installed underground at the site due to these problems.It was expected that the thinning sill would be subjected to an ever-increasing load as the thickness of the 500 m sill pillar decreased in the face of the mining excavation from below. A monitoring program consisting of the microseismic monitoring system, a range of conventional geomechanics monitoring tools as well as the undertaking of periodic seismic tomography surveys to assess the ongoing state of stress and rock mass condition within the sill was therefore warranted.The anomalously high-magnitude stress field and the brittle rockmass created a situation in which rockmass failure was common and violent. In the creation and thinning of the sill pillar, the location of banded microseismic activity was crucial in tracing rockmass failure and the associated ground control problems. Reliable source-location determination enabled the identification of areas of stress increase. The movement of the rockmass failure front could be followed, and was responsible for stope dilution, footwall and orebody development deterioration, and caving.Source-mechanism analyses gave accurate double-couple solutions for approximately forty percent of these events having at least ten recognizable polarities. Results suggested movement along vertical north-south striking or vertical east-west striking features. Underground observation of damaged access points showed that vertical north-south striking joints were experiencing failure.The microseismic activity, which was consistently concentrated close to the southwest and northeast corners of current production stopes, could be explained by a stress field oriented obliquely to the strike of the orebody, as measured prior to shrinkage of the sill pillar byin situ stress measurements and observed borehole overbreaks. The orientations of theP andT axes for the microseismic activity further confirmed that the stress field oriented obliquely to strike.While an increase in compressional-wave velocity of 2.3 percent, corresponding to a measured stress increase of approximately 10 MPa could be measured by repeated tomographic surveys, it was relatively small and only a factor of two or so above the velocity measured uncertainty. The relative insensitivity of thein situ rock mass modulus to the applied stress is believed to be largely due to the rockmass discontinuities being relatively closed prior to stress increase, as substantiated by the small deformations seen by the extensometer and borehole camera. This situation existed because of the very high pre-mining stress level.The experimental demonstration that the rock could not absorb substantially increased load through the mechanism of discontinuity closure or tightening (which would be reflected in the modulus) may be evidence in itself of potentially burst-prone ground, such as encountered at Lac Shortt.     

PILOT: a balloon-borne experiment to measure the polarized FIR emission of dust grains in the interstellar medium

Future cosmology space missions will concentrate on measuring the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background, which potentially carries invaluable information about the earliest phases of the evolution of our universe. Such ambitious projects will ultimately be limited by the sensitivity of the instrument and by the accuracy at which polarized foreground emission from our own Galaxy can be subtracted out. We present the PILOT balloon project, which aims at characterizing one of these foreground sources, the polarized continuum emission by dust in the diffuse interstellar medium. The PILOT experiment also constitutes a test-bed for using multiplexed bolometer arrays for polarization measurements. This paper presents the instrument and its expected performances. Performance measured during ground calibrations of the instrument and in flight will be described in a forthcoming paper.     

A remarkable example of a Late Jurassic shallow-water ophiuroid assemblage from the Swiss Jura Mountains

Although much effort has been put into attempts to unravel the Mesozoic ophiuroid fossil record, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the geological history of family-level compositions of brittle star assemblages. Here, we describe new ophiuroid material from the Late Oxfordian Bure Member as exposed in a construction site along the federal Highway A16 (Transjurane Highway) near Boncourt–Queue au Loup (Swiss Jura Mountains). The remains are exceptionally well preserved and partially articulated, enabling detailed morphological observations at a level comparable to Recent material. Three species are identified; they are here shown to display unequivocal affinities with extant ophiuroid lineages. The assemblage comprises a new ophiacanthid genus and species, Juracantha hottingeri, which is closely related to extant Ophientrema, an ophiolepidid close to extant Ophiozonella described here as a new genus and species, Eozonella bergeri, and a species previously described as Ophiacantha? francojurassica, which is here reassigned to the extant ophionereidid genus Ophiodoris. The assemblage was found in association with Nanogyra oyster buildups encrusted by serpulids and associated with partially-articulated crinoids, deposited in a shallow subtidal setting. Its family level composition is highly unusual with respect to modern equivalents, and instead is reminiscent of modern bathyal assemblages.     

The origins and concentrations of water,carbon, nitrogen and noble gases on Earth

The isotopic compositions of terrestrial hydrogen and nitrogen are clearly different from those of the nebular gas from which the solar system formed, and also differ from most of cometary values. Terrestrial N and H isotopic compositions are in the range of values characterizing primitive meteorites, which suggests that water, nitrogen, and other volatile elements on Earth originated from a cosmochemical reservoir that also sourced the parent bodies of primitive meteorites. Remnants of the proto-solar nebula (PSN) are still present in the mantle, presumably signing the sequestration of PSN gas at an early stage of planetary growth. The contribution of cometary volatiles appears limited to a few percents at most of the total volatile inventory of the Earth. The isotope signatures of H, N, Ne and Ar can be explained by mixing between two end-members of solar and chondritic compositions, respectively, and do not require isotopic fractionation during hydrodynamic escape of an early atmosphere.The terrestrial inventory of ⁴⁰Ar (produced by the decay of ⁴⁰K throughout the Earth's history) suggests that a significant fraction of radiogenic argon may be still trapped in the silicate Earth. By normalizing other volatile element abundances to this isotope, it is proposed that the Earth is not as volatile-poor as previously thought. Our planet may indeed contain up to ~ 3000 ppm water (preferred range: 1000–3000 ppm), and up to ~ 500 ppm C, both largely sequestrated in the solid Earth. This volatile content is equivalent to an ~ 2 (± 1) % contribution of carbonaceous chondrite (CI-CM) material to a dry proto-Earth, which is higher than the contribution of chondritic material advocated to account for the platinum group element budget of the mantle. Such a (relatively) high contribution of volatile-rich matter is consistent with the accretion of a few wet planetesimals during Earth accretion, as proposed by recent dynamical models.The abundance pattern of major volatile elements and of noble gases is also chondritic, with two notable exceptions. Nitrogen is depleted by one order of magnitude relative to water, carbon and most noble gases, which is consistent with either N retention in a mantle phase during magma generation, or trapping of N in the core. Xenon is also depleted by one order of magnitude, and enriched in heavy isotopes relative to chondritic or solar Xe (the so-called “xenon paradox”). This depletion and isotope fractionation might have taken place due to preferential ionization of xenon by UV light from the early Sun, either before Earth's formation on parent material, or during irradiation of the ancient atmosphere. The second possibility is consistent with a recent report of chondritic-like Xe in Archean sedimentary rocks that suggests that this process was still ongoing during the Archean eon (Pujol et al., 2011). If the depletion of Xe in the atmosphere was a long-term process that took place after the Earth-building events, then the amounts of atmospheric ¹²⁹Xe and ^131–136Xe, produced by the short-lived radioactivities of ¹²⁹I (T_1/2 = 16 Ma) and ²⁴⁴Pu (T_1/2 = 82 Ma), respectively, need to be corrected for subsequent loss. Doing so, the I–Pu–Xe age of the Earth becomes ≤ 50 Ma after start of solar system formation, instead of ~ 120 Ma as computed with the present-day atmospheric Xe inventory.     

Long-term changes in annual maximum snow depth and snowfall in Switzerland based on extreme value statistics

Mountain snow cover is an important source of water and essential for winter tourism in Alpine countries. However, large amounts of snow can lead to destructive avalanches, floods, traffic interruptions or even the collapse of buildings. We use annual maximum snow depth and snowfall data from 25 stations (between 200 and 2,500?m) collected during the last 80 winters (1930/31 to 2009/2010) to highlight temporal trends of annual maximum snow depth and 3-day snowfall sum. The generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution with time as a covariate is used to assess such trends. It allows us in particular to infer how return levels and return periods have been modified during the last 80?years. All the stations, even the highest one, show a decrease in extreme snow depth, which is mainly significant at low altitudes (below 800?m). A negative trend is also observed for extreme snowfalls at low and high altitudes but the pattern at mid-altitudes (between 800 and 1,500?m) is less clear. The decreasing trend of extreme snow depth and snowfall at low altitudes seems to be mainly caused by a reduction in the magnitude of the extremes rather than the scale (variability) of the extremes. This may be caused by the observed decrease in the snow/rain ratio due to increasing air temperatures. In contrast, the decreasing trend in extreme snow depth above 1,500?m is caused by a reduction in the scale (variability) of the extremes and not by a reduction in the magnitude of the extremes. However, the decreasing trends are significant for only about half of the stations and can only be seen as an indication that climate change may be already impacting extreme snow depth and extreme snowfall.