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Published June 24, 2011 | public
Journal Article

The Oxygen Isotopic Composition of the Sun Inferred from Captured Solar Wind

Abstract

All planetary materials sampled thus far vary in their relative abundance of the major isotope of oxygen, ^(16)O, such that it has not been possible to define a primordial solar system composition. We measured the oxygen isotopic composition of solar wind captured and returned to Earth by NASA's Genesis mission. Our results demonstrate that the Sun is highly enriched in ^(16)O relative to the Earth, Moon, Mars, and bulk meteorites. Because the solar photosphere preserves the average isotopic composition of the solar system for elements heavier than lithium, we conclude that essentially all rocky materials in the inner solar system were enriched in ^(17)O and ^(18)O, relative to ^(16)O, by ~7%, probably via non–mass-dependent chemistry before accretion of the first planetesimals.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received for publication 21 February 2011; accepted for publication 10 May 2011. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the NASA programs Discovery, SRLIDAP/LARS, and Cosmochemistry. The ultimate success of the Genesis Discovery Mission would not have been possible without major engineering contributions from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (Concentrator), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (payload, mission operations, management), Lockheed Martin Aerospace (spacecraft and re-entry capsule), and the Johnson Space Center (payload integration and curation). The MegaSIMS laboratory received financial support from UCLA and NASA as well as important technical support from the National Electrostatics Corporation, Kore Technology Ltd, CAMECA, and R. Plue. We benefited from expert advice from J. Huneke, C. Evans Jr., M. Suter, H. Synal, K. Grabowski, S. Smith, and P. Williams. We appreciate collaborations with the accelerator team at Orsay, led by J. Duprat and G. Slodzian. The sample investigated here was well cared for by J. Allton, E. Stansbery, and their Johnson Space Center team. We are grateful for help and advice from A. Davis, D. Papanastassiou, N. Vogel, R. Wieler, D. Woolum, the reviewers of this manuscript, and the entire Genesis Science Team.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023