Noble Gases, Nitrogen and Carbon Isotopic Compositions of the Ghubara Meteorite, Revealed by Stepwise Combustion and Crushing Methods

Abstract

The Ghubara meteorite contains abundant trapped gases in voids of highly retentive phases that can be released by stepwise crushing and thermal degassing. Their composition is dominated by the solar wind component and by radiogenic argon. We favor a scenario in which a large impact event on L-chondrite asteroid 470 Ma ago caused release, mobilization, fractionation and redistribution of accumulated gases on the Ghubara parent body. The Ghubara breccia was formed at that event and occluded trapped gases into the voids. The uncommonly high ²⁰Ne/³⁶Ar ratios of the analysed samples compared to the solar composition is considered to be due to trapping of gases released from surrounding rocks that lost light noble gases preferentially over the heavy ones. The ⁴He/²⁰Ne and ⁴He/³⁶Ar ratios, being as usually lower than in solar wind, gradually increase during stepped crushing, indicating non equilibrium distribution of the gases between the voids of different sizes that can be caused by the dynamics of the shock metamorphism process. The neon isotopic composition released by stepwise crushing and combustion is a mixture of two components: solar dominating trapped and cosmogenic Ne. The former component is mainly degassed in the initial crushing steps opening the large inclusions/voids, while the relative contribution of the latter, likely released from galactic cosmic ray produced tracks, increases with progressive crushing. During stepwise combustion the same trend in the release of the Ne components with increasing temperature is observed. The nitrogen and carbon abundances as well as their isotopic compositions in Ghubara are usual for ordinary chondrites. Most of nitrogen is chemically bounded and associated with carbon. The delivery time of Ghubara from the parent body asteroid to the Earth calculated from its exposure age is 9–28 Ma.