Theoretical and Experimental Approaches to Understanding the Anomalous Distribution of Oxygen Isotopes in the Solar System
Abstract
Decades of careful laboratory analysis of primitive meteorites have revealed an intriguing and unexplained pattern in the distribution of oxygen isotopes in the solar system. With the recent analysis of solar wind oxygen by NASA’s Genesis mission, it appears that the Sun has a distinct oxygen isotopic composition from the terrestrial planets, asteroids, and comets. These differences cannot be explained by mass-dependent diffusion and require a physical-chemical mechanism or mechanisms that separate oxygen isotopes in a non-mass dependent manner.Several hypothesis have been proposed to explain the anomalous distribution. Photochemical self-shielding of CO may explain the anomalous distribution, however, this mechanism has key weaknesses including the requirement of a very fine tuned timescale to explain the isotopic differences between the Sun and bulk of the terrestrial planets. Recently, attention has been directed at understanding specific chemical reactions that occur on interstellar dust grains due to their similarities with non-equilibrium photochemical reactions believed to be responsible for the mass-independent isotopic fractionation patterns observed in Earth’s atmosphere. A specific focus has been directed towards understanding the formation of H2O because some of its precursor (HO2, and O3) are well-known to acquire mass-independent isotopic signatures when formed in the gas-phase.In this presentation, I describe a series of laboratory astrophysical experiments whose goal is to understand the distribution of oxygen isotopes in the solar system and perhaps, by extension, the distribution in other planetary systems. Preliminary results for the isotopic composition of O3 formed at 5K will be presented as well as the first, to our knowledge, measurements of the isotopic composition of H2O (18O/16O, 17O/16O, D/H) formed at 32K. We find that H2O formed in the astrophysical conditions we simulated acquired an anomalous isotopic composition with a triple-oxygen isotope plot slope (Δδ17O/Δδ18O) similar to the Carbonaceous Chondrite and Anhydrous Mineral line that characterizes the distribution of oxygen isotopes in the solar system.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #228
- Pub Date:
- June 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AAS...22821003D