Martian magmas are thought to be rich in chlorine compared with their terrestrial counterparts. Consistent with other Martian meteorites, apatite grains in Martian meteorite NWA 6234 are dominantly Cl-apatite suggesting that the parental magma to NWA 6234 may have been rich in Cl. Here we experimentally investigate the effect of chlorine on liquidus depression and near liquidus crystallization of a synthetic composition of NWA 6234 and compare these results with previous experimental results on the effect of chlorine on near-liquidus crystallization of surface basalts Humphrey and Fastball. Previous experimental results using two different starting synthetic Martian basalt compositions showed that the change of liquidus temperature is dependent on the bulk composition of the basalt. The effect of Cl on liquidus depression is greater for lower SiO2, higher Al2O3 magmas than higher SiO2, lower Al2O3 magmas. The bulk composition for this study has lower Al2O3 and high FeO contents than previous work; therefore, we can further constrain the effect of the bulk composition on the influence of chlorine on near-liquidus crystallization. High pressure and temperature crystallization experiments were performed at 1 GPa (10 Kbar) on a synthetic basalt, of the bulk composition of NWA 6234, with 0 - 4 wt% Cl added to the sample as AgCl. The results are consistent with previous notions that with increasing wt. % Cl in the melt, the crystallization temperature decreases. Importantly, our results have a liquidus depression ∆T (oC) from added chlorine that is intermediate between the two previous results, consistent with the difference in bulk composition. This suggests that the addition of Cl to the Martian mantle may lower the magma genesis temperature and potentially aid in the petrogenesis of Martian magmas.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:siu.edu/oai:opensiuc.lib.siu.edu:theses-2746 |
| Date | 01 August 2015 |
| Creators | Farcy, Benjamin |
| Publisher | OpenSIUC |
| Source Sets | Southern Illinois University Carbondale |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses |
Page generated in 0.0023 seconds