⁶⁰Fe AND²⁶Al IN CHONDRULES FROM UNEQUILIBRATED CHONDRITES: IMPLICATIONS FOR EARLY SOLAR SYSTEM PROCESSES

The presence of about a dozen short-lived nuclides in the early solar system, including 60Fe and 26Al, has been established from isotopic studies of meteorite samples. An accurate estimation of solar system initial abundance of 60Fe, a distinct product of stellar nucleosynthesis, is important to infer the stellar source of this nuclide. Previous studies in this regard suffered from the lack of exact knowledge of the time of formation of the analyzed meteorite samples. We present here results obtained from the first combined study of 60Fe and 26Al records in early solar system objects to remove this ambiguity. Chondrules from unequilibrated ordinary chondrites belonging to low petrologic grades were analyzed for their Fe–Ni and Al–Mg isotope systematics. The Al–Mg isotope data provide the time of formation of the analyzed chondrules relative to the first solar system solids, the Ca–Al-rich inclusions. The inferred initial 60Fe/56Fe values of four chondrules, combined with their time of formation based on Al–Mg isotope data, yielded a weighted mean value of (6.3 ± 2) × 10−7 for solar system initial 60Fe/56Fe. This argues for a high-mass supernova as the source of 60Fe along with 26Al and several other short-lived nuclides present in the early solar system.