Kavli Affiliate: Laura Schaefer
| First 5 Authors: Maggie A. Thompson, Myriam Telus, Graham Harper Edwards, Laura Schaefer, Jasmeet Dhaliwal
| Summary:
Outgassing is a central process during the formation and evolution of
terrestrial planets and their atmospheres both within and beyond the solar
system. Although terrestrial planets’ early atmospheres likely form via
outgassing during planetary accretion, the connection between a planet’s bulk
composition and its initial atmospheric properties is not well understood. One
way to inform this connection is to analyze the outgassing compositions of
meteorites, and in particular carbonaceous chondrites, because they are some of
the most volatile-rich, primitive materials (in terms of their bulk
compositions) that are available for direct study. In addition, they may serve
as compositional analogs for the building block materials of terrestrial
planets in our solar system and around other Sun-like stars. This study builds
upon previous outgassing experiments that monitored the abundances of volatile
species (e.g., H2O, CO, and CO2) released from the Murchison meteorite. To gain
a more complete understanding of Murchison’s outgassing composition, we perform
a series of heating experiments under atmospheric pressure (1 bar) and vacuum
(1E-9 bar) conditions on samples of the Murchison meteorite and subsequent bulk
element analysis to inform the outgassing trends of a suite of major elements
in Murchison (e.g., Fe, Mg, Zn, and S). Under both pressure conditions, sulfur
outgases significantly at the highest temperatures (800C – 1000C). For the
samples heated under vacuum conditions, we also detect outgassing of zinc.
Combined with prior outgassing experiments, this study provides important
insights into the volatile depletion patterns of undifferentiated planetesimals
and the early outgassing compositions of terrestrial exoplanets.
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