Cooling rate of chondrules in ordinary chondrites revisited by a new geospeedometer based on the compensation rule

Abstract

For several decades efforts to constrain chondrite cooling rates from diffusion zoning in olivine gave rise to a range of values from 5 to 8400 K/h (Desch, S.J., Connolly Jr., H.C., 2002. A model for the thermal processing of particles in solar nebula shocks: application to cooling rates of chondrules. Meteorit. Planet. Sci. 37, 183–208; Greeney, S., Ruzicka, A., 2004. Relict forsterite in chondrules: implications for cooling rates. Lunar Planet. Sci. XXXV, abstract # 1246.). Such large uncertainties directly reflect the variability of diffusion data. Alternatively, from this variability results a compensation rule, log D 0 = a + bE (diffusion coefficients are written D = D 0 exp(− E/ RT)). We test a new geospeemetry approach, based on this rule, on cooling of chondrules in chondrites, Sahara-97210 LL 3.2 and Wells LL 3.3. Greeney and Ruzicka (2004) matched Fe–Mg diffusion profiles in olivine from these chondrites with cooling rates between 200 and 6000 K/h. In our geospeedometry model, the use of the compensation rule greatly reduces the uncertainties by avoiding the choice of one diffusion coefficient among many. The cooling rates we found are between 700 and 3600 K/h for Sahara and 700–1600 K/h for Wells. Finally, we discuss the influence of our analytical model parameters on our cooling rate estimates.