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The Tagish Lake C2 (ungrouped) carbonaceous chondrite fall of January 18, 2000, delivered 10 kg of one of the most primitive and physically weak meteorites yet studied. In this paper, we report the detailed circumstances of the fall and the recovery of all documented Tagish Lake fragments from a strewnfield at least 16 km long and 3 to 4 km wide. Nearly 1 kg of "pristine" meteorites were collected one week after the fall before new snow covered the strewnfield; the majority of the recovered mass was collected during the spring melt. Ground eyewitnesses and a variety of instrument-recorded observations of the Tagish Lake fireball provide a refined estimate of the fireball trajectory. From its calculated orbit and its similarity to the remotely sensed properties of the D- and P-class asteroids, the Tagish Lake carbonaceous chondrite apparently represents these outer belt asteroids. The cosmogenic nuclide results and modeled production indicate a prefall radius of 2.1-2.4 m (corresponding to 60-90 tons) consistent with the observed fireball energy release. The bulk oxygen-isotope compositions plot just below the terrestrial fractionation line (TFL), following a trend similar to the CM meteorite mixing line. The bulk density of the Tagish Lake material (1.64 ± 0.02 g/cm^3) is the same, within uncertainty, as the total bulk densities of several C-class and especially D- and P-class asteroids. The high microporosity of Tagish Lake samples (~40%) provides an obvious candidate material for the composition of low bulk density primitive asteroids.

[1] Reported Xe isotopic abundances in enstatite chondrites (EC's) show some variability, and this makes comparisons to other solar system reservoirs rather difficult. In contrast, we find uniform Xe isotopic abundances in the EC chondrite Abee for a variety of clasts, except for 128Xe and 129Xe, the isotopes affected by neutron capture in I and by extinct 129I. We report averages for the studied clasts which are consistent within error limits with OC-Xe and with the Q-Xe signature. On the other hand, the elemental abundance ratios Ar/Xe are variable between clasts. A strongly reducing environment which is indicated for enstatite meteorites was generally assumed to be consistent with conditions existing in the early inner solar system. Xe isotopic abundances in SNC meteorites from Mars and also those in some terrestrial wells show that distinct isotopic reservoirs coexisted on the same planets. In particular, the Xe isotopic signatures in terrestrial well gases show the presence of a minor distinct component in two of the reported four well gases. These authors suggested that the extra component represents solar Xe, but we show that also a meteoritic xenon reservoir of the Abee-Xe structure is an option. The reported Xe data in Ar-rich (subsolar) EC's show isotopic abundances slightly lighter than those in Abee-Xe, but the relative abundances of Ar, Kr, and Xe indicate only a minor component of elementally unfractionated solar Xe. The elemental ratios suggest rather a different origin for these gases: the loading of solar particles into grain surfaces during exposure at elevated temperatures during accretion of matter in the inner solar system. A model of this type was suggested for the accretion of gases now observed in the atmosphere on Venus. We note that disks of crystalline silicates (including enstatite and olivine) have been observed in T Tauri stars during their early evolution.

The preatmospheric mass of the Tagish Lake meteoroid was about 200,000 kilograms. Its calculated orbit indicates affinity to the Apollo asteroids with a semimajor axis in the middle of the asteroid belt, consistent with a linkage to low-albedo C, D, and P type asteroids. The mineralogy, oxygen isotope, and bulk chemical composition of recovered samples of the Tagish Lake meteorite are intermediate between CM and CI meteorites. These data suggest that the Tagish Lake meteorite may be one of the most primitive solar system materials yet studied.

The noble gases for unshocked ureilite ALHA 78019 and moderately shocked ureilite Kenna are measured. The preparation of the samples and the analysis procedures are described. The analyses reveal that for ALHA 78019 the residue yield equals 2.5 percent of the original mass of the meteorite and 25 percent of the gas is contained in the fine-grained amorphous carbon, and for Kenna the residue yield equals 2.9 percent and 60 percent of the noble gas is contained in the carbon. It is noted that the gases and carbon are present in the ureilites prior ot the shock that produced the diamond, and the shock has no effect on the origin of the carbon in these meteorites. The source of the gas-rich carbon in the ureilite ALHA 78019 is investigated; the Xe-130/C ratio, which equals 4.2 x 10 to the -10th, implies that the gases were acquired while the ureilite was exposed to the solar nebula.

Although the earth's atmosphere contains Ne, Ar, and Kr in about C1,2-chondrite proportions, Xe is depleted about 20-fold. To test the suggestion that the 'missing' Xe is trapped in Antarctic ice, distribution coefficients for Xe in artifically formed frost at -20 to -60 C were measured, using Xe-127 tracer. The values are 0.098 + or - 0.004 cc STP/g atm for trapping and less than 5 cc STP/g atm for trapping plus adsorption. If these results are representative of natural ice, then the Antarctic ice cap contains less than 1 percent of the atmospheric Xe inventory, or not greater than about 0.001 the amount needed for a C1,2-chondrite pattern. Two possibilities remain for the 'missing' Xe, both on the premise that the earth's noble gases, along with other volatiles, came from chondritic material: (1) xenon is preferentially retained in the mantle and lower crust, due to the strong affinity of Xe for clean silicate surfaces and amorphous carbon; and (2) the source material of the earth's volatiles had high, relatively unfractionated, Ar/Xe and Kr/Xe ratios, like the non-carbonaceous noble gas carriers in C3O and E-chondrites.

Primitive meteorites contain up to 400 ppm of a very fine-grained type of carbon tentatively called C-delta. Evidence is presented here that part of all of the C-delta is primary, not shock-produced, diamond formed by stellar condensation as a metastable phase. It appears that interstellar dust contains diamond.