Extraterrestrial water in micrometeorites and cosmic spherules from Antarctica: an ion microprobe study

Details Extraterrestrial water in micrometeorites and cosmic spherules from Antarctica: an ion microprobe study Extraterrestrial water in micrometeorites and cosmic spherules from Antarctica: an ion microprobe study

Sep 1999

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999m%26ps...34..773e&link_type=abstract

Meteoritics & Planetary Science, vol. 34, no. 5, pp. 773-786 (1999).

Physics

20

Scientific paper

The D/H ratios and water contents were measured by ion microprobe analysis in fifty two individual Antarctic micrometeorites (AMMs) and ten Antarctic cosmic spherules (ACSs) containing nuggets of iron hydroxide (COPS phase). In AMMs, (D values vary from -366 deg to +249 deg and water contents lie between 0.4 - 3.7 wt%. The COPS nuggets in cosmic spheres contain high water contents (2 to 8 wt%) and exhibit (D values from -144 deg to +167 deg, indicative of an extraterrestrial origin of their constituent water. The silicate portion of ACSs also contain extraterrestrial H equivalent to ~ 0.1 to 1.2 wt% water. Deuterium exchange experiments were performed with isotopically spiked water. These experiments demonstrate that water in mineral phases of AMMs and ACSs is indigenous and does not result from contamination during residence in Antarctic ice. The frequency distribution of D/H ratios in AMMs allows to further narrow the relationship between AMMs and carbonaceous chondrites to CM and CI chondrites, but contrasts with that of stratospheric interplanetary dust particles (stratospheric IDPs) of similar sizes (from ~ 10 to 50 microns). The relatively narrow range of D/H ratios measured in AMMs as well as in ACSs (which are resistant and thus less susceptible to collection biases) suggests that D-rich IDP-like particles are very rare in our AMMs collections. This indicates that these deuterium-rich grains might constitute a minor fraction of the micrometeorite flux in the interplanetary medium, and that possible collection biases in Antarctica would not be responsible for their strong depletion in the AMMs collections.

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