Formation of Stony-Iron Meteorites in Early Giant Impacts

Details Formation of Stony-Iron Meteorites in Early Giant Impacts Formation of Stony-Iron Meteorites in Early Giant Impacts

Jun 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010psrd.repte.148s&link_type=abstract

Planetary Science Research Discoveries

Other

Pallasite, Stony-Iron, Stony-Iron Meteorite, Meteorite, Iron Meteorite, Cooling Rates

Scientific paper

Pallasites, meteorites composed mainly of olivine (Mg-Fe2SiO4) and metallic Fe-Ni, are widely thought to have formed at the boundary between the metallic core of a melted and differentiated asteroid and the surrounding olivine mantle, but their precise origin is controversial. Studies of the thermal histories of 28 members of the largest group of pallasites, called the main group, by Jijin Yang and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the University of Hawaii show they cooled at diverse rates of 2.5-20 K per million years. These rates are much slower than the cooling rates of another group called IIIAB irons (50-350 K/Myr) proving that the IIIAB irons did not cool in the core of the main-group pallasite body, contrary to widespread belief. The tenfold range in the cooling rates of the main-group samples shows these pallasites did not cool at the core-mantle boundary of a single body, otherwise they would have had indistinguishable cooling rates. The main-group pallasites, like several groups of iron meteorites, appear to have cooled in bodies that were formed after the original differentiated bodies were split open by glancing collisions with larger bodies. Pallasites, the iron meteorites, and their parent asteroids are vestiges of a vast population of differentiated bodies with a violent early impact history.

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