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Investigations on a large collection of cosmic dust from the central Indian Ocean.

DRS at CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography

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Title Investigations on a large collection of cosmic dust from the central Indian Ocean.
 
Creator Parashar, K.
ShyamPrasad, M.
Chauhan, S.S.S.
 
Description We collected 1,245 spherules from the Central Indian Ocean basin by Magnetic cosmic dust collection (MACDUC) experiment raking the deep sea floor. This collection ranks among the large deep sea collections of cosmic dust. For this study, 168 particles are analyzed with SEM-EDS to characterise their cosmic nature and identify the processes that their morphological features, textures and chemical compositions reveal. All the three basic types of cosmic spherules have been identified: I-type, S-type and the G-type. The silicate or the S-type spherules are dominant in this collection. In all, 115 spherules were sectioned, polished and analyzed for major elements. I-type spherules are mainly composed of Fe and Ni oxides, some have metallic cores where appreciable amounts of Co is observed in addition to glassy phases with lithophile elements are also observed in these spherules. These evidences are supportive of the view that the I-type spherules could be metal grains from carbonaceous/unequilibrated chondritic bodies. The S-type spherules show elemental composition of Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Fe, and Ni approximately similar to chondritic compositions. In addition, some other rare particles such as an S-type sphere which contains a large zoned relict chromite crystal, other spheres with a semi-porphyritic/barred olivine texture are also observed. While most the S-type spherules appear to have carbonaceous chondrites as their parent bodies, the relict grain bearing spherule shows distinctly an ordinary chondritic parent body
 
Date 2017-09-27T13:03:21Z
2017-09-27T13:03:21Z
2010
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Earth Moon Planets, vol.107(2-4); 2010; 197-217
http://drs.nio.org/drs/handle/2264/5137
 
Language en
 
Rights An edited version of this paper was published by Springer. This paper is for R & D purpose and Copyright [2010] Springer
 
Publisher Springer