Metallic lead (Pb) nanospheres discovered in Hadean and Eoarchean zircon crystals at Jack Hills
Here, we report small randomly-distributed crystalline lead (Pb) nanospheres occurring in detrital zircon grains obtained from a weakly metamorphosed Archean conglomerate at Jack Hills, Western Australia, making this the third known global example of this phenomenon. They form in zircon crystals ran...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9845240 2023-05-15T13:44:25+02:00 Metallic lead (Pb) nanospheres discovered in Hadean and Eoarchean zircon crystals at Jack Hills Kusiak, Monika A. Wirth, Richard Wilde, Simon A. Pidgeon, Robert T. 2023-01-17 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9845240/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36650262 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-27843-6 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9845240/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36650262 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-27843-6 © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . CC-BY Sci Rep Article Text 2023 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-27843-6 2023-01-22T02:04:33Z Here, we report small randomly-distributed crystalline lead (Pb) nanospheres occurring in detrital zircon grains obtained from a weakly metamorphosed Archean conglomerate at Jack Hills, Western Australia, making this the third known global example of this phenomenon. They form in zircon crystals ranging from Hadean (> 4 billion years—Ga) to Eoarchean (> 3.6 Ga) in age, but are absent from Paleoarchean (~ 3.4 Ga) crystals. Unlike previous discoveries of nanospheres in zircon from Precambrian gneisses in Antarctica and India, detrital zircon from Jack Hills shows no evidence of ever undergoing ultra-high temperature (UHT) metamorphism, either before or after deposition, therefore implying that nanospheres can form at temperatures lower than ca. 900 °C. The nanospheres are composed of radiogenic Pb released by the breakdown of uranium (U) and thorium (Th) and are present in zircon irrespective of its U, Th and water contents, its oxygen isotopic composition, and the degree of discordance due to Pb loss or gain. The nanospheres pre-date annealed cracks in the crystals, showing that, once formed, they effectively ‘freeze’ radiogenic Pb in the zircon structure, precluding any further interaction during subsequent geological processes. Both Pb nanoclusters and nanospheres are now reported from Jack Hills, and it appears likely the former is a precursor stage in the formation of the latter. Although the precise mechanism for this transition remains unresolved, a later thermal event is required, but this likely did not reach UHT conditions at Jack Hills. Text Antarc* Antarctica PubMed Central (PMC) Scientific Reports 13 1 |
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Article Kusiak, Monika A. Wirth, Richard Wilde, Simon A. Pidgeon, Robert T. Metallic lead (Pb) nanospheres discovered in Hadean and Eoarchean zircon crystals at Jack Hills |
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Here, we report small randomly-distributed crystalline lead (Pb) nanospheres occurring in detrital zircon grains obtained from a weakly metamorphosed Archean conglomerate at Jack Hills, Western Australia, making this the third known global example of this phenomenon. They form in zircon crystals ranging from Hadean (> 4 billion years—Ga) to Eoarchean (> 3.6 Ga) in age, but are absent from Paleoarchean (~ 3.4 Ga) crystals. Unlike previous discoveries of nanospheres in zircon from Precambrian gneisses in Antarctica and India, detrital zircon from Jack Hills shows no evidence of ever undergoing ultra-high temperature (UHT) metamorphism, either before or after deposition, therefore implying that nanospheres can form at temperatures lower than ca. 900 °C. The nanospheres are composed of radiogenic Pb released by the breakdown of uranium (U) and thorium (Th) and are present in zircon irrespective of its U, Th and water contents, its oxygen isotopic composition, and the degree of discordance due to Pb loss or gain. The nanospheres pre-date annealed cracks in the crystals, showing that, once formed, they effectively ‘freeze’ radiogenic Pb in the zircon structure, precluding any further interaction during subsequent geological processes. Both Pb nanoclusters and nanospheres are now reported from Jack Hills, and it appears likely the former is a precursor stage in the formation of the latter. Although the precise mechanism for this transition remains unresolved, a later thermal event is required, but this likely did not reach UHT conditions at Jack Hills. |
format |
Text |
author |
Kusiak, Monika A. Wirth, Richard Wilde, Simon A. Pidgeon, Robert T. |
author_facet |
Kusiak, Monika A. Wirth, Richard Wilde, Simon A. Pidgeon, Robert T. |
author_sort |
Kusiak, Monika A. |
title |
Metallic lead (Pb) nanospheres discovered in Hadean and Eoarchean zircon crystals at Jack Hills |
title_short |
Metallic lead (Pb) nanospheres discovered in Hadean and Eoarchean zircon crystals at Jack Hills |
title_full |
Metallic lead (Pb) nanospheres discovered in Hadean and Eoarchean zircon crystals at Jack Hills |
title_fullStr |
Metallic lead (Pb) nanospheres discovered in Hadean and Eoarchean zircon crystals at Jack Hills |
title_full_unstemmed |
Metallic lead (Pb) nanospheres discovered in Hadean and Eoarchean zircon crystals at Jack Hills |
title_sort |
metallic lead (pb) nanospheres discovered in hadean and eoarchean zircon crystals at jack hills |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9845240/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36650262 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-27843-6 |
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Antarc* Antarctica |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctica |
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Sci Rep |
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9845240/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36650262 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-27843-6 |
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© The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-27843-6 |
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