Proposed Studentship
The search for liquid water in astromaterials
Supervisors: Queenie H. S. Chan, Richard Ghail
Project Description:
Project background: Liquid water has been reported to be present in halite, carbonate, olivine and sulphide crystals as fluid inclusions in the carbonaceous meteorites Ivuna, Murchison, Sutter’s Mill and Tagish Lake and ordinary meteorites Zag and Monahans (1998) [1, 2]. These invaluable extraterrestrial water samples provide a unique opportunity to study the nature and activity of liquid water during the earliest stages of planetary formation at the birth of the Solar System. The fluid-organic relationship allows us to investigate how aqueous fluids influence the synthesis and evolution of organic matter on the early protoplanets, which had potentially provided the raw materials for life on Earth. The proposed work sheds light upon the origin and nature of the ices that accreted to the planetesimals in the first few Ma of the Solar System. It has implications for the aggregation and large-scale mixing of planetesimals which facilitated material exchanges between different asteroidal bodies in the early Solar System.
Project aims and approach: This project aims to verify these water observations by optical examination to locate the water inclusions, which are typically less than ten micrometer in size. In addition to meteorite samples in our collection, the successful candidate will submit a sample request to the Natural History Museum and NASA Johnson Space Centre to acquire for a wide range of appropriate meteorite samples for further investigation. Upon locating new fluid inclusions, the fluid composition will be characterized by Raman spectroscopy to determine if the fluid is truly liquid water. Subsamples of water-bearing crystals and the associated organic solids will be prepared by microdrill, of which the chemical compositions will be determined by elemental analysis and mass spectrometry. The hydrogen and oxygen isotopic composition of the samples will be determined by SIMS in order to determine the origin of the liquid water: is the fluid related to water on asteroids, comets, icy moons or terrestrial ocean water [3].
Training: The successful candidate will be encouraged to apply for the Hands-on Training in Handling and Manipulation of Small Extraterrestrial Samples to be held at NASA Johnson Space Center and the Lunar and Planetary Institute, USA. The student will be given training for transferrable skills such as clean lab techniques, mineral identification, wet chemical sample preparation and all analytical methods necessary for the implementation of this project at RHUL.
References:
[1] Zolensky, M.E., et al. (2017) Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 375. [2] Chan, Q.H.S., et al. (2018) Science Advances, 4, eaao3521. [3] Yurimoto, H., et al. (2014) Geochemical Journal, 48, 549-560.
On the application form please identify the funding source as “College funded Phd-Studentship - Earth Sciences”. Information on how to apply can be found here: https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/applying/research-degrees/how-to-apply/ Please contact the lead supervisor directly for further details
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