[meteorite-list] Water in space

From: Gerald Flaherty <grf2_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Jun 1 16:27:19 2005
Message-ID: <003201c566e8$4ce26b40$2f01a8c0_at_Dell>

Holy Cow! Even I am getting a glimmer[i repeat, glimmer] of "understanding".
I thank you Doug! AND I thank YOU TOM for asking a question that I always
wanted to ask but was afraid to!! Jerry
----- Original Message -----
From: <MexicoDoug_at_aol.com>
To: <daistiho_at_hotmail.com>; <Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 6:30 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Water in space


> Tracy L. wrote:
>>Exactly! Consider the case of copper carbonate. In its hydrated form,
>>it is a pretty blue crystal; we used to use it in our swimming hole in
>>low amounts to kill off algae and weeds. In its anhydrous form, it's
>>a greenish powder. Don't eat either one; bad. I'm not akamai enough
>>to guess what hydrates might be present in meteorites, but I'm pretty
>>sure this is what is meant by water being present in meteorites,
>>chemically bound into various minerals, which may be released by
>>heating or chemical reaction.
>
> A-Hola Tracy, Hmmmm. The idea that a hydrate is a great way to stabilize
> water I totally agree with you and the physics of it, so I follow there.
> But:
>
> I think you are confusing copper sulfate (pretty hue, light royal blue
> crystals) with copper carbonate and/or copper carbonate hydroxide
> minerals.
> Copper carbonate does not form a hydrated complex in a chemical sense,
> though
> copper carbonate hydroxide might be loosely called "hydrated" instead of
> a
> hydroxide, by some fast talking pool chemical salesman (or mystic jewelry
> peddler?)
> at local pool store if it is really sold there (?). Anyway, a hydroxide
> is
> a different chemical animal than a hydrated complex containing water
> which is
> bound by weaker structural or van der waals types of attraction: that to
> which I think Chris eluded and of main interest here for water are
> chemical/structural "hydrates".
>
> That chemical hydrated compound on your mind would likely be Copper
> Sulfate,
> wouldn't it? It forms a pentahydrate = complex with 5 water molecules
> per
> Copper/Sulfur. The Copper carbonate might be an undesirable precipitate
> in
> the swimming hole produced from interaction of copper sulfate with lime
> or
> disolved carbon dioxide I bet, and it might be a yucky green?
>
> Copper Sulfate (a.k.a., synthetic chalcanthite) is a beautiful lab
> example
> of a stable hydrated complex to at least +150 C. It is quite possible it
> could appear in trace quantities in meteorites, so you are not far off at
> all if
> we deal with CuSo4*5H20 !!
>
> However, the more common hydrated (i.e., bound water) reservoirs found in
> some meteorites I found in the literature based on your contemplation of
> not
> even guessing, would be a suite of clay minerals, which can result from
> the
> aqueous modification ("weathering") products of feldspars and pyroxenes,
> common
> meteoritic stock. That is the same kinds of clay that expands when you
> mix
> it with water and can be formed into shapes...i.e., hydrated clay - well
> not
> all Clays hydrate, but plenty do.
>
> Clay minerals are very complicated beasts that still cause all kinds of
> trouble even regarding nomenclature to say what is what, since their
> structures
> vary so much, simply being a woven backbone pattern of silicates and
> hydroxides and a variety of candidate cations/metals, and ambiguous
> formulae something
> like (Ca,Na,H)(Al,Mg,Fe,Zn)2(Si,Al)4O10(OH)2*n(H2O) in the case of
> smectites, which can form widely variable laminar sheets which suck up
> water between
> them better than silica gel! Unlike copper sulfate, slight changes in
> temperature and humidity can reverberate by changing their structures,
> formula, and
> most importantly, amount of bound water - even getting a density is hard,
> let
> alone a positive compositional ID. So that is why you can't do too much
> better than "clay minerals". The two best tests are a taste test and
> messy
> Separation-Xray analysis. And that would seem to be the
> variable/flexible nature
> of much of the bound water in not-too-shocked-and-baked meteoroids for
> s/he
> who wants to really do some bonding with them...
>
> For chondrites, here are some of those hydrated beasts that serve as
> space
> oasises (that has a nice ring to it):
>
> Type 3: phyllosilicates, principally smectites and micas, serpentine
> associated with ferrihydrite.
> Type 2: Smectites (rare in the CM2s, abundant in the CR2s), Abundant
> serpentines (with extremely variable compositions and structures), Mg-Fe
> sulfates,
> tochilinite-serpentine intergrowths and carbonates.
> Type 1: Saponite + (Serpentine)
>
> Taken from an impressive face-off of Zolensky and Bischoff in Maui at:
> WORKSHOP ON PARENT-BODY AND NEBULAR MODIFICATION OF CHONDRITIC MATERIALS
> (preliminary program)
> June 17, 1997, Maui, Hawai'i
> http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/chondrite/pdf/program.pdf
>
> I chose the Zolensky writeup not because I don't believe the other
> competing
> theories (I am a Bischoff fan), but rather because of the enumeration of
> minerals he did including some clay and other hydrate-ables. The
> documentation
> is:
> AQUEOUS ALTERATION OF CARBONACEOUS CHONDRITES: EVIDENCE FOR ASTEROIDAL
> ALTERATION. M. E. Zolensky, Mail Code SN2, NASA Johnson Space Center,
> Houston TX 77058, USA.
>
> Wish to have been a fly for three days on the hotel wall in Maui then,
> Aloha, Doug
>
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Received on Wed 01 Jun 2005 04:27:15 PM PDT