Classification of interplanetary dust particles using major, minor, and trace elements?

Details Classification of interplanetary dust particles using major, minor, and trace elements? Classification of interplanetary dust particles using major, minor, and trace elements?

Jul 1994

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994metic..29q.439a&link_type=abstract

Meteoritics (ISSN 0026-1114), vol. 29, no. 4, p. 439

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Abundance, Chemical Analysis, Chondrites, Interplanetary Dust, Temperature Effects, Trace Elements, Asteroids, Atmospheric Entry, Cluster Analysis, Comets, Stratosphere

Scientific paper

For 20 years stratospheric interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) have been analyzed by various methods, but the main questions remain: What can we really learn from their study? What is the parent body of an individual particle? Comets are the main dust producer in the solar system, but in the Earth's orbit the asteroidal interplanetary dust component is enhanced. Consequently, some IDPs are surely asteroidal. The main criterion for distinguishing these two groups is their temperature history during atmospheric entry, but, unfortunately, particles that may be related to comets because of extreme entry heating probably are altered in many important features. We compiled the major-, minor-, and trace-element concentrations of all analyzed IDPs to obtain a database of altogether 80 stratospheric particles, most of them classified 'chondritic'. We subjected this complete dataset to several types of cluster analysis using the logarithms of the element concentrations normalized to Fe and cosmic abundance as variables. However, the missing data constitute an essential problem: Not even one element has been measured in all IDPs. Consequently, an analysis including all particles simultaneously was impossible and we had to select certain elements to include the maximum number of particles. Our analyses generally showed that only small groups can be built indicating a heterogeneous dataset. Possible reasons for that are (1) The heterogeneity is original and the dust particle simply cannot be grouped. (2) Atmospheric processes have destroyed (or overprinted) too severely the original chemical features of many IDPs. Two different effects may be responsible: First, the quantitative analysis of element contents near the detection limits of any instrument probably leads to an overestimate of the concentration. Second, the lower the abundance of an element in original IDPs, the more this element is prone to stratospheric contaminating processes. More simultaneously measured parameters from each particle are required for a comprehensive analysis. Contaminating processes, which are likely the origin of Br enrichments (and possible also of other elements) have to be excluded or modeled before trace elements in IDPs can be related to solar system history.

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