A large planetary body inferred from diamond inclusions in a ureilite meteorite

Farhang Nabiei (), James Badro, Teresa Dennenwaldt, Emad Oveisi, Marco Cantoni, Cécile Hébert, Ahmed El Goresy, Jean-Alix Barrat and Philippe Gillet
Additional contact information
Farhang Nabiei: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
James Badro: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Teresa Dennenwaldt: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Emad Oveisi: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Marco Cantoni: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Cécile Hébert: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Ahmed El Goresy: Universität Bayreuth
Jean-Alix Barrat: Université de Bretagne Occidentale
Philippe Gillet: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Planetary formation models show that terrestrial planets are formed by the accretion of tens of Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos through energetic giant impacts. However, relics of these large proto-planets are yet to be found. Ureilites are one of the main families of achondritic meteorites and their parent body is believed to have been catastrophically disrupted by an impact during the first 10 million years of the solar system. Here we studied a section of the Almahata Sitta ureilite using transmission electron microscopy, where large diamonds were formed at high pressure inside the parent body. We discovered chromite, phosphate, and (Fe,Ni)-sulfide inclusions embedded in diamond. The composition and morphology of the inclusions can only be explained if the formation pressure was higher than 20 GPa. Such pressures suggest that the ureilite parent body was a Mercury- to Mars-sized planetary embryo.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03808-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-03808-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03808-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().