Impact processing of chondritic planetesimals: Siderophile and volatile element fractionation in the Chico L chondrite

Abstract— A large impact event 500 Ma ago shocked and melted portions of the L‐chondrite parent body. Chico is an impact melt breccia produced by this event. Sawn surfaces of this 105 kg meteorite reveal a dike of fine‐grained, clast‐poor impact melt cutting shocked host chondrite. Coarse (1–2 cm diameter) globules of FeNi metal + sulfide are concentrated along the axis of the dike from metal‐poor regions toward the margins. Refractory lithophile element abundance patterns in the melt rock are parallel to average L chondrites, demonstrating near‐total fusion of the L‐chondrite target by the impact and negligible crystal‐liquid fractionation during emplacement and cooling of the dike. Significant geochemical effects of the impact melting event include fractionation of siderophile and chalcophile elements with increasing metal‐silicate heterogeneity, and mobilization of moderately to highly volatile elements. Siderophile and chalcophile elements ratios such as Ni/Co, Cu/Ga, and Ir/Au vary systematically with decreasing metal content of the melt. Surprisingly small (?10²) effective metal/silicate‐melt distribution coefficients for highly siderophile elements probably reflect inefficient segregation of metal despite the large degrees of melting. Moderately volatile lithophile elements such K and Rb were mobilized and heterogeneously distributed in the L‐chondrite impact breccias whereas highly volatile elements such as Cs and Pb were profoundly depleted in the region of the parent body sampled by Chico. Volatile element variations in Chico and other L chondrites are more consistent with a mechanism related to impact heating rather than condensation from a solar nebula. Impact processing can significantly alter the primary distributions of siderophile and volatile elements in chondritic planetesimals.     

THE AIR PHOTOGRAPH REQUIREMENTS OF GEOLOGISTS

The geologist's use of air photographs and the characteristics studied by photogeologists are briefly described. The influence of photographic factors such as scale, season, time of day, film type, processing, overlap and dimensional accuracy are considered from the geologist's viewpoint.     

Fitting matrix-valued variogram models by simultaneous diagonalization (Part I: Theory)

Suppose that ¯(x₁),...,¯Z(x_n). are observations of vector-valued random function ¯(x). In the isotropic situation, the sample variogram γ^*(h) for a given lag h is $$\bar \gamma ^ * (h) = \frac{1}{{2N(h)}}\mathop \sum \limits_{s(h)} (\overline Z (x_1 ) - \overline Z (x_1 )) \overline {(Z} (x_1 ) - \overline Z (x_1 ))^T $$ where s(h) is a set of paired points with distance h and N(h) is the number of pairs in s(h).. For a selection of lags h₁, h₂, .... h_k such that N (h₁) > O. we obtain a ktuple of (semi) positive definite matrices $\bar \gamma ^ * (h_{ 1} ),. . . ., \bar \gamma ^ * (h_{ k} )$ . We want to determine an orthonormal matrix B which simultaneously diagonalizes the $\bar \gamma ^ * (h_{ 1} ),. . . ., \bar \gamma ^ * (h_{ k} )$ or nearly diagonalizes them in the sense that the sum of squares of offdiagonal elements is small compared to the sum of squares of diagonal elements. If such a B exists, we linearly transform $\overline Z (x)$ by $\overline Y (x) = B\overline Z (x)$ . Then, the resulting vector function $\overline Y (x)$ has less spatial correlation among its components than $\overline Z (x)$ does. The components of $\overline Y (x)$ with little contribution to the variogram structure may be dropped, and small crossvariograms fitted by straightlines. Variogram models obtained by this scheme preserve the negative definiteness property of variograms (in the matrix-valued function sense). A simplified analysis and computation in cokriging can be carried out. The principles of this scheme arc presented in this paper.