Searching for seafloor massive sulfides: a quantitative review of high-resolution methods in deep sea sonar bathymetry for mining applications

Seafloor massive sulphides are deep sea mineral deposits currently being examined as a potential mining resource. Conventional sonar bathymetry products gathered by sea surface platforms do not achieve adequate spatial resolution to detect these resources. High-resolution beamforming methods (such as multiple signal classification and estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance techniques) improve the resolution of sonar bathymetry. We perform a quantitative review of these high-resolution methods using a novel simulator, showing results in the absence of platform motion for a single ping cycle. It was found that high-resolution methods achieved greater bathymetric accuracy and higher resolution than conventional beamforming and that these methods may be adequate for this style of marine exploration. These methods were also robust in the presence of unwanted persistent signals and low signal to noise ratios.     

The Sutter's Mill meteorite: Thermoluminescence data on thermal and metamorphic history

A piece of the Sutter's Mill meteorite, fragment SM2‐1d, has been examined using thermoluminescence techniques to better understand its thermal and metamorphic history. The sample had very weak but easily measureable natural and induced thermoluminescence (TL) signals; the signal‐to‐noise ratio was better than 10. The natural TL was restricted to the high‐temperature regions of the glow curve suggesting that the meteorite had been heated to approximately 300 °C within the time it takes for the TL signal to recover from a heating event, probably within the last 10⁵ years. It is possible that this reflects heating during release from the parent body, close passage by the Sun, or heating during atmospheric passage. Of these three options, the least likely is the first, but the other possibilities are equally likely. It seems that temperatures of approximately 300 °C reached 5 or 6 mm into the meteorite, so that all but one of the small Sutter's Mill stones have been heated. The Dhajala normalized induced TL signal for SM2‐1d is comparable to that of type 3.0 chondrites and is unlike normal CM chondrites, the class it most closely resembles, which do not have detectable TL sensitivity. The shape of the induced TL curve is comparable to other low‐type ordinary, CV, and CO chondrites, in that it has a broad hummocky structure, but does not resemble any of them in detail. This suggests that Sutter's Mill is a unique, low‐petrographic–type (3.0) chondrite.     

Oral Histories in Meteoritics and Planetary Science—XXI: Donald Burnett

In this interview, Donald Burnett (Fig. 1) describes how he applied to the University of Chicago, with considerable support from his father, where he took classes from Harold Urey and was inspired by Ed Anders to pursue a career in nuclear chemistry and, later, cosmochemistry. As a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, Don learned to use charged‐particle tracks as a detector for radioactive nuclei, a technique that he applied to a wide variety of problems over the next 20 years, including the neutron profile probe that was deployed on the Moon. After a one‐year postdoc with William Fowler at the California Institute of Technology, he became involved with Jerry Wasserburg, who ultimately obtained a faculty position for him in the Geology Division. Since then, Don has worked on a number of fundamental problems in cosmochemistry, chronology of the solar system, the initial Pu/U abundance, fractionation of U and Pu in igneous processes, and elemental abundances. This last interest led him to advocate, propose, and lead the Genesis space mission to collect and return samples of the solar wind. The crash of the return capsule caused alarm, but some aspects of the mission were unaffected and others have been successfully handled, so that several major new results have been published: the lack of an SEP component in lunar samples, the Ne and Ar composition of the solar wind, and, most importantly, the oxygen and nitrogen isotopic composition of the Sun. Don received the Leonard Medal in 2012.     

METEORITES AND THERMOLUMINESCENCE

The TL techniques that have been developed successfully for archaeological and dosimetric applications cannot be unambiguously applied to meteorites because of the possibility that most or all of the meteorite TL is in dynamic equilibrium — its rate of thermal decay balancing its rate of build-up. In this situation, space irradiation temperature and, thereby, orbital information for the most recent eras (10⁵-10⁶ years), can be determined. In only a few instances (e.g. meteorites with very low exposure ages) will the possibility exist that equilibrium may not have been reached, but even here it has to be shown that the exposure event had removed previously existing TL before normal TL dating techniques can be employed. There is some evidence to suggest that the TL sensitivity builds up with time. This raises the possibility of dating major shock and/or reheating events, if it can be shown that such events destroyed the TL sensitivity.