Purple Salt and Tiny Drops of Water in Meteorites

Details Purple Salt and Tiny Drops of Water in Meteorites Purple Salt and Tiny Drops of Water in Meteorites

Dec 1999

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999psrd.repte..32t&link_type=abstract

Planetary Science Research Discoveries

Other

Meteorite, Carbonaceous Chondrite, Monahans

Scientific paper

Some meteorites, especially those called carbonaceous chondrites, have been greatly affected by reaction with water on the asteroids in which they formed. These reactions, which took place during the first 10 million years of the Solar System's history, formed assorted water-bearing minerals, but nobody has found any of the water that caused the alteration. Nobody, that is, until now. Michael Zolensky and team of scientists from the Johnson Space Center in Houston and Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, Virginia) discovered strikingly purple sodium chloride (table salt) crystals in two meteorites. The salt contains tiny droplets of salt water (with some other elements dissolved in it). The salt is as old as the Solar System, so the water trapped inside the salt is also ancient. It might give us clues to the nature of the water that so pervasively altered carbonaceous chondrites and formed oceans on Europa and perhaps other icy satellites. However, how the salt got into the two meteorites and how it trapped the water remains a mystery - at least for now.

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