Hi all,
A very interesting paper in SCIENCE today. A team of Japanese and American scientists has investigated the basaltic meteorite NWA 011, and discovered that this meteorite resembles an Eucrite but is different in some aspects, most notably the Oxygen Isotope composition. While Eucrite origins are linked with asteroid 4 Vesta, their results suggest that NWA 011 must be from another parent body. Palme, in his News & Views item in the same issue of Science, suggests the option that it is a basalt from the planet Mercury. Below the abstract of the Yamaguchi et al. paper. - Marco ---------- Science Apr 12 2002: 334-336. A New Source of Basaltic Meteorites Inferred from Northwest Africa 011 Akira Yamaguchi,12* Robert N. Clayton,3 Toshiko K. Mayeda,3 Mitsuru Ebihara,4 Yasuji Oura,4 Yayoi N. Miura,5 Hiroshi Haramura,1 Keiji Misawa,12 Hideyasu Kojima,12 Keisuke Nagao6 Eucrites are a class of basaltic meteorites that share common mineralogical, isotopic, and chemical properties and are thought to have been derived from the same parent body, possibly asteroid 4 Vesta. The texture, mineralogy, and noble gas data of the recently recovered meteorite, Northwest Africa (NWA) 011, are similar to those of basaltic eucrites. However, the oxygen isotopic composition of NWA011 is different from that of other eucrites, indicating that NWA011 may be derived from a different parent body. The presence of basaltic meteorites with variable oxygen isotopic composition suggests the occurrence of multiple basaltic meteorite parent bodies, perhaps similar to 4 Vesta, in the early solar system. --------- ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
