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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter January 23, 2019

The oxidation state of sulfur in lunar apatite

  • Maryjo Brounce EMAIL logo , Jeremy Boyce , Francis M. McCubbin , Jennifer Humphreys , Justin Reppart , Edward Stolper and John Eiler
From the journal American Mineralogist

Abstract

Lunar apatites contain hundreds to thousands of parts per million of sulfur. This is puzzling because lunar basalts are thought to form in low oxygen fugacity (fO2) conditions where sulfur can only exist in its reduced form (S2–), a substitution not previously observed in natural apatite. We present measurements of the oxidation state of S in lunar apatites and associated mesostasis glass that show that lunar apatites and glass contain dominantly S2–, whereas natural apatites from Earth are only known to contain S6+. It is likely that many terrestrial and martian igneous rocks contain apatites with mixed sulfur oxidation states. The S6+/S2– ratios of such apatites could be used to quantify the fO2 values at which they crystallized, given information on the portioning of S6+ and S2– between apatite and melt and on the S6+/S2– ratios of melts as functions of fO2 and melt composition. Such a well-calibrated oxybarometer based on this the oxidation state of S in apatite would have wide application.

Keywords: Moon; oxygen; apatite; sulfur
  1. Funding

    This research was performed at GeoSoilEnviroCARS (The University of Chicago, Sector 13), APS ANL. GeoSoilEnviroCARS is supported by the National Science Foundation—Earth Sciences (EAR-1634415) and Department of Energy—GeoSciences (DE-FG02-94ER14466). This research used resources of APS, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by ANL under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. Support for this research was provided by the University of California and by NASA’s Planetary Science Research Program.

Acknowledgments

We thank A. Lanzirotti and M. Newville for assistance in beamline operations at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory (APS ANL). We also thank the curatorial staff at NASA Johnson Space Center for allocations of Apollo samples for this study. We thank A. Bell, G. Ustunisik, and an anonymous reviewer for constructive comments.

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Received: 2018-08-31
Accepted: 2018-11-01
Published Online: 2019-01-23
Published in Print: 2019-02-25

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