[meteorite-list] Cold Asteroids May Have A Soft Heart (Allende Meteorite)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:55:20 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201104131855.p3DItKsd020316_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/allende-analysis-0408.html

Cold asteroids may have a soft heart

Partially molten small bodies may be abundant in space, and may have
given the Earth its oceans.
David L. Chandler, MIT News Office
April 8, 2011

A new analysis of one of the most well-known meteorites on Earth
provides strong evidence that the prevailing view of many asteroids is
wrong. Rather than randomly mixed blobs of rock and dust stuck together,
it appears that the asteroid that was the source of the Allende
meteorite was large enough to have had a molten core, even though its
surface remained cold and solid. The new view also suggests that
astronomers' view of how planets like the Earth formed may need revision.

The Allende meteorite fell in Mexico in 1969, shattering into thousands
of fragments as it slammed into the Earth's atmosphere and strewing them
across dozens of miles of desert. More than two tons of scattered pieces
have been found, and it has become perhaps the best-studied meteorite ever.

When the solar system formed, planets built up through the slow
accumulation of smaller objects that collided and stuck together. When
these growing collections of rubble reached a certain size, radioactive
elements within them heated up enough so that the rock melted, and
heavier elements tended to sink toward their cores. This separating
process (known as differentiation) ended up producing concentric layers
of different composition, structured like the layers of an onion. In the
metallic cores at the centers of these bodies, swirling eddies of molten
metal would produce a magnetic field. Planetary scientists have long
thought that asteroids that formed cores must have completely
differentiated and melted throughout their interiors. Now, new findings
by planetary scientists at MIT and other institutions suggest that may
not be the case: that many asteroids with cores might be only partially
differentiated, with their outer regions largely unmelted.

"It's a new paradigm for how people imagine the parent bodies of
meteorites," says Benjamin Weiss, associate professor of planetary
sciences and paleomagnetism in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric
and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). The shift in thinking comes from a
combination of laboratory work and theoretical modeling. The lab
studies, led by former MIT postdoctoral scholar Laurent Carporzen, found
evidence for magnetization, apparently built up over a period of
millions of years, in a piece of the Allende meteorite. A separate
theoretical analysis, led by Linda Elkins-Tanton, the Mitsui Career
Development Associate Professor of Geology in EAPS, showed exactly how
such magnetization could have occurred - and why that changes not just
our view of asteroids, but also of how all the planets formed and where
the water that fills Earth's oceans came from.

The two lines of evidence were published this month in a two related
papers, one appearing in the journal Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences
<http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/03/28/1017165108>, the other in
/Earth and Planetary Science Letters/
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V61-52G1S1V-5&_user=501045&_coverDate=03%2F25%2F2011&_rdoc=24&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_origin=browse&_zone=rslt_list_item&_srch=doc-info%28%23toc%235801%239999%23999999999%2399999%23FLA%23display%23Articles%29&_cdi=5801&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=33&_acct=C000022659&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=501045&md5=f9bfa3ef56a2950bf51ff0cded4ed6df&searchtype=a>.
Weiss is a co-author of both papers.

The Allende meteorite is a type called a carbonaceous chondrite.
Chondrites are conglomerates of tiny pieces (called chondrules and
inclusions) stuck together, and the individual pieces are thought to be
remnants of the primordial cloud of material that originally collapsed
to form the solar system. "Many of these are the oldest solar system
solids we know of," Weiss says.

The new analysis shows that while newly formed asteroids melted from the
inside out because of their radioactive elements, their surfaces,
exposed to the cold of space and continuing to accumulate layers of new,
cold fragments, remained cold. Computer modeling of the cooling process
by Elkins-Tanton clearly shows this disparity of a molten interior and
cold, unmelted crust, she says.

The decisive new evidence came from studies of the way mineral grains
within the meteorite are magnetized: the magnetic orientations of all
the grains line up, showing that they became magnetized after the
material had all become stuck together, rather than being a remnant of
earlier magnetic fields in the swirling cloud of dust from which the
object formed. In addition, using a form of radiometric dating involving
isotopes of xenon, they could determine that the magnetization took
place over a period of millions of years. That rules out an alternative
theory that the grains could have become magnetized as a result of a
brief pulse of magnetism in the cloud of dust itself.

The finding has implications far beyond the specific asteroid that was
the source of this meteorite: "It says there's a whole spectrum of
planetary bodies, from fully melted to unmelted," Weiss says.

Erik Asphaug, professor of earth and planetary sciences at the
University of California at Santa Cruz and a specialist in asteroids and
comets, finds the case compelling. "The magnetic data is difficult to
argue with - that the Allende meteorite acquired magnetization late, and
apparently from a stable field. I am convinced about that," he says.
Weiss and Elkins-Tanton, he says, "have made a firm association, for the
first time, between differentiated parent bodies and chondrule-rich
objects."

Asphaug adds "I think their conclusion has very significant
implications, in that many differentiated asteroids can be 'dressed' in
chondrule clothing."

The new research also provides important information about the whole
process of planet formation and how long it took, says Elkins-Tanton.
The analysis shows that the parent body must have formed within just 1.5
million years, she says. "The question is, what fraction of
planetesimals formed in that period of time? It turns out to be a lot."

Her calculations show that the planetesimals that stuck together to form
the early Earth, even though the heating process would have made them
drier than previously thought, would still have retained enough water
within their unmelted outer regions to produce the oceans. That
contradicts a widely held view of planet formation in which the vast
majority of the water and other volatile materials on Earth arrived
later, delivered by impacting comets and asteroids.

It also implies that this process must have been commonplace in planet
formation, and greatly improves the odds that most of the planets around
other stars will also have abundant water, she says, which is considered
an essential prerequisite for life as we know it. As we study distant
planets around other stars, "This increases the probability of finding
life in a form that we would recognize it,"she says.
Received on Wed 13 Apr 2011 02:55:20 PM PDT