Asteroids chemical evolution

Meteorites provide perhaps the best record of the chemical evolution of small bodies in the Solar System, and this record is supplemented by asteroidal spectroscopy. Meteorites show progressive degrees of thermal processing on their parent asteroids, from primitive carbonaceous chondrites that contain percent-level quantities of water, through ordinary chondrites that show a wide range of degree of thermal metamorphism, to the achondrites that have been melted and differentiated. 

Many asteroids are dry, as evidenced by meteorites in which water is virtually absent. These samples include many classes of chondrites, as well as melted chunks of the crusts, mantles, and cores of differentiated objects. Anhydrous bodies were important building blocks of the rocky terrestrial planets, and their chemical compositions reveal details of processes that occurred within our own planet on a larger scale. The distributions of these asteroids within the solar system also provide insights into their formation and evolution. 

The astrophysical models of protoplanetary disks based on optical observations and laboratory experiments and meteoritic measurements provide the basis for theories of nebular evolution. The best and most precise relevant measurements are from meteoritic analysis. Meteorites from the Asteroid Belt of our Solar System are the best record of the evolution of the solar nebula from a gas-dust mixture to an organized planetary system. The addition of cometary and solar-wind sample analysis complement these data. Combination of fundamental laboratory-based experiments and modeling efforts has led to a highly resolved understanding of the chemical conditions and processes in the primordial solar nebula (see Chapter 6). In this chapter an overview of recent advances in our understanding of the chemical and isotopic evolution of the early Solar System and protoplanetary disks is presented. 

There is evidence from chondrites that the solar nebula was well mixed between 0.1 and 10 AU during its first several million years of the evolution, as shown by the homogeneity in concentrations of many isotopes of refractory elements (Boss 2004 Chapter 9). This is likely caused by the evaporation and recondensation of solids in the very hot inner nebula, followed by outward transport due to turbulent diffusion and angular momentum removal. Materials out of which terrestrial planets and asteroids are built have been heated to temperatures above 1300 K and are thus depleted in volatile elements. The inner solar nebula, with some exceptions, does not retain memories of the pristine interstellar medium (ISM) chemical composition (Palme 2001 Trieloff Palme 2006). 

Simpson A. B. and Ahrens L. H. (1977) The chemical relationship between howardites and the sificate fraction of mesosiderites. In Comets, Asteroids, Meteorites—Interpretations, Evolution, and Origins (ed. A. H. Delsemme). U. Toledo Press, Toledo, OH, pp. 445-450. 

If not for the larger size and wetter composition of Earth, our planet would look like those, a gray swirl of light and dark rocks, pitted with asteroid craters and devoid of life or even movement. Mercury and the moon are time machines to an alternate past in which Earth did not have the chemicals that it needed to continue its mineral evolution. 

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