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Stellar And Interstellar Origins Of Meteoritic Nanodiamonds, Josiah Lewis

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 1987 presolar grains were first isolated from meteorites, opening up a new line of data about the stars that produced them. Based on anomalies in isotopic ratios, identification and classification of presolar grains has borne great fruit in understanding nucleosynthesis, stellar evolution, and mass loss from the stellar objects in which these grains originated: primarily, but not exclusively, supernovae and asymptotic giant branch stars.Meteoritic nanodiamonds were the first type of presolar grain identified, but more than three decades later, their origins remain unclear. Anomalies in the ratios of Xe isotopes carried by the nanodiamonds suggest the nanodiamonds formed from …