Fachbereich 14 - Geowissenschaften
Institut für Planetologie
Analytische Planetologie

Mysterite - the most probable cometary material among meteorites

Comets, the still enigmatic very small bodies from the outer solar system, are believed to have preserved best the initial state of solar system. Its volatile component that was largely lost even from the most primitive meteorites, the CI chondrites, may have found shelter in comets. The special interest in comets is reflected in the expensive efforts of the international space agencies to study them by space missions with in situ analyses (ROSETTA, CONTOUR, STARDUST) and by sample return missions (STARDUST). It has been speculated since long that fragments of (burned out) comets should be present in meteorite collections, but only now with the results from the comet Halley missions in 1986 a very few specific meteorites can be related to comets with some degree of certainty. Among those the Ukrainian LL3.1 chondrite Krymka is the best candidate. Krymka contains dark inclusions that are rich in volatile elements like Ag, Tl and Bi, and that also carry graphite and organic material. The carrier of this complex component was facetiously called Mysterite. The small size of the hitherto studied dark Krymka inclusions, however, prevented their full analysis. Through the close co-operation with Dr. V. Semenenko, Kiev, the proposed project has access to very rare huge (a few mm) dark inclusions. We will study the structure, the element distributions and contents, the organic components, and the isotopic composition of Mysterite with a multitude of most advanced high-sensitivity micro-analytical methods in an international consortium. The aim is to understand the formation and history of this enigmatic meteoritic material and also to test the probable link of Mysterite to comets.

Drittmittelgeber:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Beteiligte Wissenschaftler:

I. Weber, T. Stephan, E.K. Jessberger, V.P. Semenenko, C. Wies

Veröffentlichungen:

A variety of lithic fragments in the Krymka (LL3.1) chondrite. V.P. Semenenko and A.F. Girich (2001) Meteoritics & Planet. Sci. 37, A187.

TEM investigations of a "mysterite" inclusion from the Krymka LL-chondrite: Preliminary results. I. Weber, V.P. Semenenko, T. Stephan, and E.K. Jessberger (2003) LPSC 34th, #1535.