Isotopic homogeneity of iron in the early solar nebula

Abstract

The chemical and isotopic homogeneity of the early solar nebula, and the processes producing fractionation during its evolution, are central issues of cosmochemistry. Studies of the relative abundance variations of three or more isotopes of an element can in principle determine if the initial reservoir of material was a homogeneous mixture or if it contained several distinct sources of precursor material. For example, widespread anomalies^1,2,3,4 observed in the oxygen isotopes of meteorites have been interpreted as resulting from the mixing of a solid phase that was enriched in ¹⁶O with a gas phase in which ¹⁶O was depleted^1,2,3, or as an isotopic ‘memory’ of Galactic evolution⁵. In either case, these anomalies are regarded as strong evidence that the early solar nebula was not initially homogeneous. Here we present measurements of the relative abundances of three iron isotopes in meteoritic and terrestrial samples. We show that significant variations of iron isotopes exist in both terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials. But when plotted in a three-isotope diagram, all of the data for these Solar System materials fall on a single mass-fractionation line, showing that homogenization of iron isotopes occurred in the solar nebula before both planetesimal accretion and chondrule formation.