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Plagioclase breakdown as an indicator for shock conditions of meteorites

Nature Geoscience volume 3, pages 41–45 (2010)Cite this article

Abstract

Shocked meteorites that were formed when their parent body underwent shock metamorphism often contain the mineral plagioclase either in an amorphous form or in its high-pressure phase. The peak pressures in shock metamorphism can be constrained by shock-recovery experiments that determine the amorphization pressures of plagioclase1,2,3. However, in these experiments temperatures have been unrealistically low and timescales much shorter than those in natural events. Here we present in situ X-ray diffraction measurements of two kinds of plagioclase feldspar in conditions of increasing pressures and temperatures. We find that the amorphization pressure of plagioclase decreases with increasing temperature, suggesting that previous studies overestimated this parameter1,2,3. We also found that the mineral jadeite forms first from amorphous plagioclase, whereas the nucleation of other minerals such as stishovite or garnet is significantly delayed. The occurrence of jadeite in shocked meteorites that do not contain stishovite4,5,6,7,8 can therefore be explained as a result of the crystallization kinetics. We conclude that the study of plagioclase breakdown can constrain the pressure–temperature–time history of shock events, and thus help to reconstruct the collisional history of asteroids in the early Solar System.

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Figure 1: Pressure and temperature conditions for plagioclase amorphization and crystallization of the high-pressure phases.
Figure 2: Changes of X-ray diffraction patterns during amorphization and crystallization in albite.
Figure 3: Crystallization kinetics of high-pressure phases from (partially) amorphous plagioclase.
Figure 4: Formation of high-pressure phases on shock-event timescales.

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Acknowledgements

We thank N. Tomioka, M. Miyahara, S. Ozawa, T. Nakamura, Y. Nakamuta and M. Akaogi for valuable discussions. We also thank A. El Goresy for constructive reviews. This work was partially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japanese government (to T. Kubo and M. Kimura). In situ X-ray diffraction experiments were carried out at AR-NE5C and BL14C2 of the Photon Factory (proposal no. 2004G225) and BL04B1 of SPring-8 (proposal no. 2006B1430).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan

    Tomoaki Kubo, Takumi Kato, Masayuki Nishi & Aiko Tominaga

  2. Faculty of Science, Ibaraki University, Mito 310-8512, Japan

    Makoto Kimura

  3. Photon Factory, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, Tsukuba 305-0801, Japan

    Takumi Kikegawa

  4. Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute, Hyogo 679-5198, Japan

    Ken-ichi Funakoshi

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  1. Tomoaki Kubo
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Contributions

T. Kubo and M.K. organized the research project and completed the manuscript. T. Kubo carried out most of the experiments and analyses of the data with the help of T. Kato, M.N., A.T., T. Kikegawa, and K.F. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Tomoaki Kubo.

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Kubo, T., Kimura, M., Kato, T. et al. Plagioclase breakdown as an indicator for shock conditions of meteorites. Nature Geosci 3, 41–45 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo704

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