Microprobe Analyses of Rare-Earth-Element Fractionation in Meteoritic Minerals

摘要

Two meteorites were analyzed by PIXE with the Los Alamos Nuclear Microprobe. The enstatite achondrite Pena Blanca Spring and the ordinary chondrite St. Severin were chosen as likely candidates for use in exp 244 Pu (t/sub 1/2/ = 82 my) cosmochronology and geochronology. These applications require the meteoritic minerals to have unfractionated actinides and lanthanides relative to cosmic elemental abundance ratios. The PIXE analyses produced evidence of actinide-lanthanide fractionation in Pena Blanca Spring oldhamite (CaS) whereas the St Severin phosphates, whitlockite and chlorapatite, do not exhibit this fractionation. (ERA citation 08:055094)