Abstract
There has been much recent interest in the rare gas abundances of terrestrial materials, due mainly to the discovery of ‘excess’ radiogenic Ar and He trapped in deep-sea glasses1–4. The abundances of these gases indicated that such materials might effectively trap the internal Earth's atmosphere, and evidence of trapped primordial gases has by now been found not only in deep-sea glasses5–10, but also in xenolithic inclusions11–15, deep ocean waters16, CO2 well gas17–19, volcanic gas20 and diamonds21. The rare gas elemental abundances measured in these samples may not quantitatively reflect the deep-Earth pattern. Several elemental fractionation processes have been suggested, ranging from selective enrichment of the lighter gases in an upward-rising magma22,23 to posteruptive diffusion loss which would selectively deplete the lighter gases24. Each of these processes will affect concentrations of the helium and xenon isotopes in a characteristic manner, thus leaving in the glasses an isotopic fingerprint of what has occurred. New data are reported here which indicate extremely small concentrations of fissiogenic xenon in deep-sea basalts containing large concentrations of trapped excess radiogenic helium and argon. The resulting high 4Her/136Xef ratios are diagnostic of frac-tionation during the magmatic processes leading to eruption rather than of posteruptive loss of gas (which would show the opposite effect). The results indicate that studies of volatiles in general and of the rare gases in particular in such mantle-derived samples, even in those with no subsequent alteration or contamination, may be profoundly influenced by mass-dependent pre-eruptive effects. The consequences of this fractionation for the deep-Earth K/U ratio are discussed.
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Fisher, D. Helium and xenon in deep-sea basalts as a measure of magmatic differentiation. Nature 282, 825–827 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1038/282825a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/282825a0
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