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GEMS and the devil in their details

Nature Astronomy volume 3, pages 603–605 (2019)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 05 July 2019

The Original Article was published on 15 April 2019

arising from: L. R. Nittler et al. Nature Astronomy https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0737-8 (2019)

In their Article, Nittler et al.1 report the first identification of the grains known as GEMS (glass with embedded metal and sulfides) in a carbon-rich clast in the CR2 carbonaceous chondrite LaPaz Icefield 02342 (‘La Paz’). Proving that GEMS survive in this primitive outer solar nebula clast in a meteorite from an asteroid that may have accreted inside the orbits of the giant planets would be an important milestone. The implications would include grain transport and radial mixing in the solar nebula and the origin and state of preservation of the fine-grained matrices in chondritic meteorites. Here the identification of GEMS in the clast in La Paz is evaluated.

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Fig. 1: Identification of GEMS.

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Acknowledgements

J.P.B. acknowledges funding from NASA planetary materials programmes and invaluable discussions with D. Joswiak, H. Leroux, D. Brownlee and K. Bustillo.

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  1. University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

    John P. Bradley

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Bradley, J.P. GEMS and the devil in their details. Nat Astron 3, 603–605 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0833-9

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