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American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science Advances, 45(9), 2023

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi7048

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Water circulation in Ryugu asteroid affected the distribution of nucleosynthetic isotope anomalies in returned sample

Journal article published in 2023 by Tetsuya Yokoyama ORCID, Meenakshi Wadhwa ORCID, Tsuyoshi Iizuka ORCID, Vinai Rai, Ikshu Gautam ORCID, Yuki Hibiya ORCID, Yuki Masuda ORCID, Makiko K. Haba ORCID, Ryota Fukai ORCID, Rebekah Hines ORCID, Nicole Phelan ORCID, Yoshinari Abe ORCID, Jérôme Aléon ORCID, Conel M. O’D Alexander ORCID, Sachiko Amari ORCID and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Studies of material returned from Cb asteroid Ryugu have revealed considerable mineralogical and chemical heterogeneity, stemming primarily from brecciation and aqueous alteration. Isotopic anomalies could have also been affected by delivery of exogenous clasts and aqueous mobilization of soluble elements. Here, we show that isotopic anomalies for mildly soluble Cr are highly variable in Ryugu and CI chondrites, whereas those of Ti are relatively uniform. This variation in Cr isotope ratios is most likely due to physicochemical fractionation between 54 Cr-rich presolar nanoparticles and Cr-bearing secondary minerals at the millimeter-scale in the bulk samples, likely due to extensive aqueous alteration in their parent bodies that occurred 5.2 − 1.4 + 1.8 Ma after Solar System birth. In contrast, Ti isotopes were marginally affected by this process. Our results show that isotopic heterogeneities in asteroids are not all nebular or accretionary in nature but can also reflect element redistribution by water.