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Nitrogen isotope variations in the Solar System

Nature Geoscience volume 8, pages 515–522 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

The relative proportion of the two isotopes of nitrogen, 14N and 15N, varies dramatically across the Solar System, despite little variation on Earth. NASA's Genesis mission directly sampled the solar wind and confirmed that the Sun — and, by inference, the protosolar nebula from which the Solar System formed — is highly depleted in the heavier isotope compared with the reference nitrogen isotopic composition, that of Earth's atmosphere. In contrast, the inner planets, asteroids, and comets are enriched in 15N by tens to hundreds of per cent; organic matter in primitive meteorites records the highest 15N/14N isotopic ratios. The measurements indicate that the protosolar nebula, inner Solar System, and cometary ices represent three distinct isotopic reservoirs, and that the 15N enrichment generally increases with distance from the Sun. The 15N enrichments were probably not inherited from presolar material, but instead resulted from nitrogen isotope fractionation processes that occurred early in Solar System history. Improvements in analytical techniques and spacecraft observations have made it possible to measure nitrogen isotopic variability in the Solar System at a level of accuracy that offers a window into the processing of early Solar System material, large-scale disk dynamics and planetary formation processes.

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Figure 1: Nitrogen isotope variation in molecular clouds from our galaxy as a function of distance from the galactic centre.
Figure 2: Nitrogen isotope variations in Solar System objects and reservoirs.

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Acknowledgements

Discussions with J. Aléon, K. Altwegg, D. Bockelée-Morvan, P. Cartigny, M. Chaussidon, K. Mandt, O. Mousis, and F. Robert were much appreciated during the preparation of this work. This work was supported by the European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013 grant agreement no. 267255 to B.M.), the Deep Carbon Observatory, and the CNRS-INSU Programme de Planétologie (PNP). This is CRPG-CNRS contribution 2372.

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    Evelyn Füri & Bernard Marty

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Füri, E., Marty, B. Nitrogen isotope variations in the Solar System. Nature Geosci 8, 515–522 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2451

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