A universal meteorite formation process

VARELA, MARIA EUGENIA; KURAT, GERO

Zurich, Switzerland

Congreso; Meteoritical Society Annual Meeting; 2006

Our study of glasses in several types of meteorites show that all glasses have a common source, the solar nebula [1]. Glasses are the remnants of the liquid that facilitated growth of well-ordered crystals from the gas phase by the VLS growth process. The chemical (major and trace element) composition of all glasses have a surprising property: they do not show the signature of crystallization of the minerals they are associated with. Our key observation is that glasses do not have the composition of the residual melt from which the crystals (documented by glass in-clusions), or aggregates and chondrules (documented by mesosta-sis glass), or the whole rock (documented by glasses that fills open spaces in achondrites) were formed [2-3].