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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Comprehensive Report On Extraterrestrial Resource Extraction, Robinson Raphael Dec 2021

Comprehensive Report On Extraterrestrial Resource Extraction, Robinson Raphael

Student Works

The prospect of asteroid mining provides a plethora of riches that include metals and water. As the number of discovered asteroids continues to grow, opportunities arise to commercialize these resources within Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs). With urgent applications on Earth and in space, NEAs allow for a surge in sales. Planning forward, Astroider Aerospace Systems follows a mission split into four phases. Phase 1 develops a series of spacecraft using existing technologies, titled as Near-Earth Asteroid Miners and Near-Earth Asteroid Surveyors. Phase 2 first launches the surveyors to candidate NEAs, prospecting them for ores. To identify potential celestial bodies for this …


Carbonatite Metasomatism And Water Systematics Of Peridotite Xenoliths From Lanzarote, Canaries, Sierra N. Patterson Apr 2021

Carbonatite Metasomatism And Water Systematics Of Peridotite Xenoliths From Lanzarote, Canaries, Sierra N. Patterson

Theses and Dissertations

Water in Earth’s mantle, present as structurally bound hydrogen in minerals, influences large scale processes like mantle deformation, plate tectonics, and melting. To better understand the processes controlling water concentrations in the Earth’s upper mantle, we analyzed hydrogen (calculated as ppm wt. H2O), major, and trace element concentrations in minerals from peridotite mantle xenoliths of Lanzarote, Canaries. The Canaries Islands are thought to be the surface expression of a deep-seated mantle plume erupting through the Atlantic Ocean lithosphere. Carbonatite magmas have erupted in the Canaries and previous studies have shown evidence for carbonatite metasomatism in Lanzarote peridotites. Thus, …


Analysis Of Water Concentration Formed Within Deformed Synthetic Quartz Crystals, Andrew Steward Jan 2021

Analysis Of Water Concentration Formed Within Deformed Synthetic Quartz Crystals, Andrew Steward

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Analyzing the strength of synthetic quartz is essential to understanding the strength of natural milky quartz, which likely controls the strength of Earth’s continental crust. Synthetic quartz is sometimes used for deformation experiments because it has a homogenous water distribution unlike natural milky quartz. The purpose of this study is to determine if annealing synthetic quartz at T = 600°C will convert the water in synthetic quartz to free water, like milky quartz, but with little water loss. Following two annealing experiments at Texas A&M University, I performed four annealing experiments to measure the water content of five synthetic quartz …