From a report submitted to the Endowment Committee by Megan Hammet, University of Manchester.
This project tested gas-melt exchange as a mechanism for the characteristic oxygen isotope pattern of primary minerals within igneous CAIs from CV chondrites. To do this, isotope exchange experiments were conducted between chondritic and Type B CAI melts, and a CO-CO2 gas mix; the oxygen isotope compositions of these experiments were then measured. The Meteoritical Society research grant provided the primary portion of funding for instrument time on the Cameca ims 1280 ion microprobe at the W.M. Keck Cosmochemistry Laboratory, based in the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, University of Hawai’i (USA). This instrument was used to conduct in situ SIMS analyses for the oxygen isotope compositions of the various mineral phases within the Type B CAI exchange experiments.
The results of this project were written as an abstract and presented at the 86th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society (Brussels, Belgium; June 2024). The results also comprise a chapter of my PhD thesis, written in journal format, and so is currently being prepared as a manuscript for publication.