ANTARCTICA: A TREASURE–TROVE FOR PLANETARY SCIENCES. AUSTRALASIAN MICROTEKTITES FROM EAST ANTARCTICA

The planetary science community has benefitted greatly from research in Antarctica. The discovery of large accumulations of meteorites in blue ice fields on the polar plateau since 1969 and of cosmic dust in Antarctic ice, snow and supraglacial moraines as well as in loose sediment traps in the Transantarctic Mountains since the late 1980s has had a tremendous impact on the planetary science community. Over the last 50 years tens of thousands of meteorite specimens and cosmic dust particles have been recovered by Japanese, US, European, Chinese and Korean polar programs. This enormous research effort has provided the international planetary science community with the opportunity to study an extraordinary number of samples from a large variety of planetary bodies, greatly advancing our knowledge of the origin and evolution of the solar system

The weathering of micrometeorites from the Transantarctic Mountains

Micrometeorites are cosmic dust particles recovered from the Earth's surface that dominate the influx of extraterrestrial material accreting to our planet. This paper provides the first in-depth study of the weathering of micrometeorites within the Antarctic environment that will allow primary and secondary features to be distinguished. It is based on the analysis of 366 particles from Larkman Nunatak and 25 from the Transantarctic Mountain collection. Several important morphological categories of weathering effects were identified: (1) irregular and faceted cavities, (2) surface etch pits, (3) infilled cavities, (4) replaced silicate phases, and (5) hydrated and replaced metal. These features indicate that congruent dissolution of silicate phases, in particular olivine, is important in generating new pore space within particles. Comparison of the preservation of glass and olivine also indicates preferential dissolution of olivine by acidic solutions during low temperature aqueous alteration. Precipitation of new hydrous phases within cavities, in particular ferrihydrite and jarosite, results in pseudomorph textures within heavily altered particles. Glass, in contrast, is altered to palagonite gels and shows a sequential replacement indicative of varying water to rock ratios. Metal is variably replaced by Fe-oxyhydroxides and results in decreases in Ni/Fe ratio. In contrast, sulphides within metal are largely preserved. Magnetite, an essential component of micrometeorites formed during atmospheric entry, is least altered by interaction with the terrestrial environment. The extent of weathering in the studied micrometeorites is sensitive to differences in their primary mineralogy and varies significantly with particle type. Despite these differences, we propose a weathering scale for micrometeorites based on both their degree of terrestrial alteration and the level of encrustation by secondary phases. The compositions and textures of weathering products, however, suggest open system behaviour and variable water to rock ratios that imply climatic variation over the lifetime of the micrometeorite deposits

Quark-antiquark potential from a deformed AdS/QCD

In this work we calculate the static limit of the energy for a quark-antiquark pair from the Nambu-Goto action using a holographic approach with a deformed AdS space, with warp factor $\exp\{(\kappa z)^n/n\}$. From this energy we derive the Cornell potential for the quark-antiquark interaction. We also find a range of values for our parameters which fits exactly the Cornell potential parameters. In particular, setting the zero energy of the Cornell potential at 0.33 fermi, we find that $\kappa=0.56$ GeV and $n=1.3$.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures. V3: Abstract changed, typos corrected, text improved, new appendix, figures 1 and 2 slightly different, figure 2 now presents explicitly our result for the Cornell Potential, results unchanged." To appear in AHE

Dar Al Gani 896: A unique picritic achondrite

Accepted versio

The Extraterrestrial Dust Flux: Size Distribution and Mass Contribution Estimates Inferred From the Transantarctic Mountains (TAM) Micrometeorite Collection

This study explores the long‐duration (0.8–2.3 Ma), time‐averaged micrometeorite flux (mass and size distribution) reaching Earth, as recorded by the Transantarctic Mountains (TAM) micrometeorite collection. We investigate a single sediment trap (TAM65), performing an exhaustive recovery and characterization effort and identifying 1,643 micrometeorites (between 100 and 2,000 μm). Approximately 7% of particles are unmelted or scoriaceous, of which 75% are fine‐grained. Among cosmic spherules, 95.6% are silicate‐dominated S‐types, and further subdivided into porphyritic (16.9%), barred olivine (19.9%), cryptocrystalline (51.6%), and vitreous (7.5%). Our (rank)‐size distribution is fit against a power law with a slope of −3.9 (R2 = 0.98) over the size range 200–700 μm. However, the distribution is also bimodal, with peaks centered at ~145 and ~250 μm. Remarkably similar peak positions are observed in the Larkman Nunatak data. These observations suggest that the micrometeorite flux is composed of multiple dust sources with distinct size distributions. In terms of mass, the TAM65 trap contains 1.77 g of extraterrestrial dust in 15 kg of sediment (<5 mm). Upscaling to a global annual estimate gives 1,555 (±753) t/year—consistent with previous micrometeorite abundance estimates and almost identical to the South Pole Water Well estimate (~1,600 t/year), potentially indicating minimal variation in the background cosmic dust flux over the Quaternary. The greatest uncertainty in our mass flux calculation is the accumulation window. A minimum age (0.8 Ma) is robustly inferred from the presence of Australasian microtektites, while the upper age (~2.3 Ma) is loosely constrained based on 10Be exposure dating of glacial surfaces at Roberts Butte (6 km from our sample site)

Chemical analysis of iron meteorites using a hand-held X-ray fluorescence spectrometer

We evaluate the performance of a hand-held XRF (HHXRF) spectrometer for the bulk analysis of iron meteorites. Analytical precision and accuracy were tested on metal alloy certified reference materials and iron meteorites of known chemical composition. With minimal sample preparation (i.e., flat or roughly polished surfaces) HHXRF allowed the precise and accurate determination of most elements heavier than Mg, with concentrations > 0.01% m/m in metal alloy CRMs, and of major elements Fe and Ni and minor elements Co, P and S (generally ranging from 0.1 to 1% m/m) in iron meteorites. In addition, multiple HHXRF spot analyses could be used to determine the bulk chemical composition of iron meteorites, which are often characterised by sulfide and phosphide accessory minerals. In particular, it was possible to estimate the P and S bulk contents, which are of critical importance for the petrogenesis and evolution of Fe-Ni-rich liquids and iron meteorites. This study thus validates HHXRF as a valuable tool for use in meteoritics, allowing the rapid, non-destructive (a) identification of the extraterrestrial origin of metallic objects (i.e., archaeological artefacts); (b) preliminary chemical classification of iron meteorites; (c) identification of mislabelled/unlabelled specimens in museums and private collections and (d) bulk analysis of iron meteorites