Hydrous olivine alteration on Mars and Earth

Hydrous alteration of olivine macrocrysts in a Martian olivine phyric basalt, NWA 10416, and a terrestrial basalt from southern Colorado are examined using SEM, EPMA, TEM, and µXRD techniques. The olivines in the meteorite contain linear nanotubes of hydrous material, amorphous areas, and fluid dissolution textures quite distinct from alteration identified in other Martian meteorites. Instead, they bear resemblance to terrestrial deuteric alteration features. The presence of the hydrous alteration phase Mg‐laihunite within the olivines has been confirmed by µXRD analysis. The cores of the olivines in both Martian and terrestrial samples are overgrown by unaltered rims whose compositions match those of a separate population of groundmass olivines, suggesting that the core olivines are xenocrysts whose alteration preceded crystallization of the groundmass. The terrestrial sample is linked to deep crustal metasomatism and the “ignimbrite flare‐up” of the Oligocene epoch. The comparison of the two samples suggests the existence of an analogous relatively water‐rich magmatic reservoir on Mars.     

Europa's dynamic icy crust

Abstract— Europa's icy crust records active resurfacing by tectonic and thermal processes over tens of millions of years, as rapidity demonstrated by a paucity of craters. Tidal working causes rotational torque, surface stress, internal heating, and orbital evolution, which can explain the formation of observed tectonic crack patterns, ridges, crustal displacement, and chaotic terrain by processes involving connections between the surface and the underlying ocean through cracks, melt sites, and occasional impacts. These processes were recent, and thus most likely continue today. The permeability of the crust allows exchange of materials, including oxidants and exogenic organics from the surface and endogenic substances from the ocean, such that a habitable biosphere might extend to within a few centimeters of the surface. Continual changes in environmental conditions in the ice crust, such as deactivation of individual cracks after thousands of years (due to non‐synchronous rotation) and crustal thawing (releasing any trapped organisms), could provide drivers for biological adaptation, as well as opportunity for evolution.     

Reconstructing the response of C3 and C4 plants to decadal-scale climate change during the late Pleistocene in southern Illinois using isotopic analyses of calcified rootlets

The δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O values of well-preserved carbonate rhizoliths (CRs) provide detailed insights into changes in the abundance of C₃ and C₄ plants in response to approximately decadal-scale changes in growing-season climate. We performed stable isotope analyses on 35-40 CRs sampled at 1-cm intervals from an 18-cm-thick paleosol formed in southern Illinois during Wisconsin interstadial 2. Minimum δ¹³C values show little variation with depth, whereas maximum values vary dramatically, and average values show noticeable variability; maximum δ¹⁸O values vary less than the minimum δ¹⁸O values. These findings indicate that a diverse and stable C₃ flora with a limited number of C₄ grass species prevailed during this interval, and suggest that the maximum growing-season temperatures were relatively stable, but minimum growing-season temperatures varied considerably. Two general patterns characterize the relationships between the δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O values obtained from the 1-cm samples. In some cases, low δ¹³C values correspond to low δ¹⁸O values and high δ¹³C values correspond to high δ¹⁸O values, suggesting that cooler growing-season temperatures favored C₃ and warmer growing-season temperatures favored C₄ plants. In other cases, low δ¹³C values correspond to high δ¹⁸O values, likely suggesting that wetter growing-season conditions were favorable to C₃ plants. The high density of well-preserved CRs in this paleosol provides a unique opportunity to study detailed ecological responses to high-resolution variability in growing-season climate.     

Resolution issues in numerical models of oceanic and coastal circulation

The baroclinic and barotropic properties of ocean processes vary on many scales. These scales are determined by various factors such as the variations in coastline and bottom topography, the forcing meteorology, the latitudinal dependence of the Coriolis force, and the Rossby radius of deformation among others. In this paper we attempt to qualify and quantify scales of these processes, with particular attention to the horizontal resolution necessary to accurately reproduce physical processes in numerical ocean models. We also discuss approaches taken in nesting or down-scaling from global/basin-scale models to regional-scale or shelf-scale models. Finally we offer comments on how vertical resolution affects the representation of stratification in these numerical models.     

Polar Wander and Surface Convergence of Europa's Ice Shell: Evidence from a Survey of Strike-Slip Displacement

Two global issues regarding Europa are addressed by a survey of strike-slip faults. First, a common type of terrain that appears to represent convergent sites of surface removal, which may help compensate for substantial widespread dilation along tectonic bands elsewhere, thus helping resolve the problem of conserving global surface area, is identified. Second, evidence for polar wander may provide the first confirmation of that theoretically predicted phenomenon. These results, among others, come from an extensive survey of strike-slip faults over the portion of the surface where Galileo images at 200-m/pixel resolution were obtained for regional mapping purposes. The images cover two broad swaths that run from the far north to the far south, one in the leading hemisphere and the other in the trailing hemisphere. Among the faults that have been mapped are a fault 170 km long with a strike-slip offset of 83 km, the greatest yet identified on Europa, and a quasi-circular strike-slip fault that surrounds a 500-km-wide plate, which has undergone rotation as a rigid unit. Reconstruction of specific examples of strike slip reveals sites of lateral convergence. Because Europa is unique in many ways, these sites are not similar to compression features on other bodies, which may explain why they had previously been difficult to identify. The distribution of strike slip in both hemispheres, when compared with predictions of the theory of tidal walking, provides evidence for polar wander: The crust of Europa appears to have slid as a single unit relative to the spin axis, such that the site on the crust that was previously at the north rotational pole has wandered, probably during the last few million years, to a location currently in the leading hemisphere, about 30° away from the spin axis. Such polar wander probably also explains symmetry patterns in the distribution of chaotic terrain, pits, and uplift features.     

Numerical Evaluation of the General Yarkovsky Effect: Effects on Eccentricity and Longitude of Periapse

J. N. Spitale and R. Greenberg (2001, Icarus149, 222-234) developed a nonlinearized, finite-difference solution to the heat equation that yields orbital rates of change due to the Yarkovsky effect for small, spherical, bare-rock asteroids and used it to investigate changes in semimajor axis caused by the Yarkovsky effect. Here, we present results for changes in eccentricity and longitude of periapse. These results may be useful as benchmarks for simplified analytical solutions. Moreover, we explore a range of parameters, some of which are inaccessible to most other approaches. Instantaneous rates can be quite fast: For a 1-m scale body rotating with a 5-h period, de/dt can be as fast as 0.1 per million years (da/dt rates for similar test bodies were reported in J. N. Spitale and R. Greenberg (2001, Icarus149, 222-234)). For more typical rotation periods, these rates would be considerably slower. Output from our calculation method could be used in simulations of asteroid population evolution such as that by W. F. Bottke, D. P. Rubincam, and J. A. Burns (2000, Icarus145, 301-331). On long time scales, impacts would randomize the spin axis before significant orbital evolution could occur. Nevertheless, occasional favorable rotation states might persist long enough for substantial eccentricity changes to accumulate (1) if the body is decoupled from the main belt (e.g., many near-Earth asteroids), (2) if the population of very small (mm-scale) main-belt impactors is less than expected, or (3) if our numerical results are scaled up to km-size bodies.     

Studies of multiple stellar systems – IV. The triple-lined spectroscopic system Gliese 644

We present a radial velocity study of the triple-lined system Gliese 644 and derive spectroscopic elements for the inner and outer orbits with periods of 2.965 5 and 627 d. We also utilize old visual data, as well as modern speckle and adaptive optics observations, to derive a new astrometric solution for the outer orbit. These two orbits together allow us to derive masses for each of the three components in the system: M _A=0.410±0.028 (6.9 per cent), M _Ba=0.336±0.016 (4.7 per cent), and M _Bb=0.304±0.014 (4.7 per cent) M_⊙. We suggest that the relative inclination of the two orbits is very small. Our individual masses and spectroscopic light ratios for the three M stars in the Gliese 644 system provide three points for the mass–luminosity relation near the bottom of the main sequence, where the relation is poorly determined. These three points agree well with theoretical models for solar metallicity and an age of 5 Gyr. Our radial velocities for Gliese 643 and vB 8, two common proper motion companions of Gliese 644, support the interpretation that all five M stars are moving together in a physically bound group. We discuss possible scenarios for the formation and evolution of this configuration, such as the formation of all five stars in a sequence of fragmentation events leading directly to the hierarchical configuration now observed, versus formation in a small N cluster with subsequent dynamical evolution into the present hierarchical configuration.