Computer Science
Scientific paper
Dec 1999
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999psrd.repte..34t&link_type=abstract
Planetary Science Research Discoveries
Computer Science
Enstatite, Meteorite, Aubrite, Asteroid, Indarch, Planetary Data
Scientific paper
Enstatite meteorites are a diverse group of strange rocks. They contain little or no oxidized iron, a rare occurrence in the Solar System. Nevertheless, melting experiments on these oxygen-depleted meteorites give clues about magma compositions and core formation in asteroids. Tim McCoy (Smithsonian Institution), Tamara Dickinson (Catholic University), and Gary Lofgren (Johnson Space Center) heated an enstatite chondrite (called Indarch) to a range of temperatures above the temperature of initial melting. They found that the sulfide minerals in the rock melted at 1000o C. This disproved a hypothesis that the calcium sulfide in the rock formed at a very high temperature in the gas-dust cloud from which the planets formed and survived melting in igneous enstatite meteorites. The experiments also indicate that the metallic iron and sulfide minerals begin to form connected networks when only about 20% of the rocky material is melted. This suggests that core formation in the asteroid could have taken place at such low amounts of melting, rather than requiring much higher amounts of melting as some scientists have argued. The experiments also show that igneous enstatite meteorites could have formed from unmelted enstatite chondrites.
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