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Implications of the Viking results for volatile outgassing from Earth and Mars

Abstract

TUREKIAN and Clark1 have recently discussed an inhomogeneous accumulation model for terrestrial planets, have compared the outgassing product from a veneer of carbonaceous chondrites with the abundances of volatiles on Earth and predicted the amounts of various gases for Venus. The recent measurements of rare gas abundances on Mars by Viking2–4 have prompted us to test such a model for Mars. We find that not only the relative abundance of H, C, N, 20Ne, 36A, Kr and Xe but their total amounts can be best explained if the outer layers of Earth and Mars were made of material similar to ordinary chondrites (LL) as suggested by Anders5, rather than carbonaceous chondrites as assumed by a number of authors in recent years.

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RASOOL, S., LE SERGEANT, L. Implications of the Viking results for volatile outgassing from Earth and Mars. Nature 266, 822–823 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1038/266822a0

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