The chemical and thermal conditions of the earliest protoplanetary disk set the stage for everything that followed — from the compositions of the first planetesimals to the volatile budgets of rocky planets. Iron meteorites, as the remnant cores of the first generation of differentiated planetesimals, preserve a direct record of these earliest conditions and the processes that shaped them. In this talk, I will present results from a series of studies using the elemental and isotopic compositions of iron meteorites to reconstruct three interconnected aspects of earliest disk chemistry: the thermal structure of the inner disk and its role in establishing the volatile and moderately volatile element compositions of the first planetesimals; the collisional and dynamical histories of these bodies and how they were disrupted and reassembled in the earliest solar system; and the processes that controlled the distribution of nitrogen, carbon, and water across the disk. Together, these results reveal that the chemical diversity we observe among rocky bodies today was largely inherited from the conditions and processes of the earliest disk, within the first few million years of solar system history.
Venue
Seminar rooms
If you are external to the Department of Earth Sciences and wish to receive information about departmental seminars please join our mailing list by sending a message to: earth_sciences_seminar-request@maillist.ox.ac.uk
