Physical propoerties of incompletely compacted equilibrated ordinary chondrites: Implications for asteroidal structure and impact processing
- Central Florida
Aside from robotic exploration, meteorites are our primary source of information about the asteroids that they sample. Although there are some discrepancies, there are dynamical, spectral, and compositional evidence for an S-type asteroid connection to the ordinary chondrite meteorites. Reconciling the measured bulk density of chondrites with that of asteroids can yield important inferences about the internal structure of asteroids. For example, the bulk density of S-type asteroids is typically much less than the bulk density of chondrites, leading to the inference that asteroids contain a significant quantity of macroporosity. We have identified several unusual ordinary chondrites that have been incompletely compacted relative to petrologically similar but much less porous chondrites. Although these are equilibrated chondrites, they have extreme amounts of pore spaces between mineral grains. Here, we detail our efforts quantifying the nature of the pore spaces in these chondrites and we examine the implications for the structure and mechanical processing of the asteroids from which these chondrites originate. Our pore size distribution data may also provide constraints for the modeling of heat flow and shock waves within primordial chondritic parent bodies.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Advanced Photon Source (APS)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 1009056
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Lunar and Planetary Science XXXX;March 23-27, 2009;The Woodlands, TX
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- ENGLISH
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Pore size distribution in an uncompacted equilibrated ordinary chondrite
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