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Our studies are highly interdisciplinary, but are focused on the processes and products of early planetary and asteroidal differentiation, especially the genesis of the ancient lunar crust. The compositional diversity that we explore is the residue of process diversity, which has strong relevance for comparative planetology.

Our studies are highly interdisciplinary, but are focused on the processes and products of early planetary and asteroidal differentiation, especially the genesis of the ancient lunar crust. Most of the accessible lunar crust consists of materials hybridized by impact-mixing. Rare pristine (unmixed) samples reflect the original genetic diversity of the early crust. We studied the relative importance of internally generated melt (including the putative magma ocean) versus large impact melts in early lunar magmatism, through both sample analysis and physical modeling. Other topics under investigation included: lunar and SNC (martian?) meteorites; igneous meteorites in general; impact breccias, especially metal-rich Apollo samples and polymict eucrites; effects of regolith/megaregolith insulation on thermal evolution and geochronology; and planetary bulk compositions and origins. We investigated the theoretical petrology of impact melts, especially those formed in large masses, such as the unejected parts of the melts of the largest lunar and terrestrial impact basins. We developed constraints on several key effects that variations in melting/displacement ratio (a strong function of both crater size and planetary g) have on impact melt petrology. Modeling results indicate that the impact melt-derived rock in the sampled, megaregolith part of the Moon is probably material that was ejected from deeper average levels than the non-impact-melted material (fragmental breccias and unbrecciated pristine rocks). In the largest lunar impacts, most of the impact melt is of mantle origin and avoids ejection from the crater, while most of the crust, and virtually all of the impact-melted crust, in the area of the crater is ejected. We investigated numerous extraordinary meteorites and Apollo rocks, emphasizing pristine rocks, siderophile and volatile trace elements, and the identification of primary partial melts, as opposed to partial cumulates. Apollo 15 sample 15434,28 is an extraodinarily large glass spherule, nearly if not entirely free of meteoritic contamination, and provides insight into the diversity of mare basalts in the Hadley-Apennine region. Apollo 14 sample 14434 is in many respects a new rock type, intermediate between nonmare gabbronorites and mare basalts. We helped to both plan and implement a consortium to study the Yamato-793605 SNC/martian meteorite.

Models of magma ocean (MO) cooling and crystallization can provide important constraints on MO plausibility for a given planet, on the origin of long term, stable crusts, and even on the origin of the solar system. Assuming the MO is initially extensive enough to have a mostly molten surface, its first stage of cooling is an era of radiative heat loss from the surface, with extremely rapid convection below, and no conductive layer in between. The development of the chill crust starts the second stage of MO cooling. Heat loss is now limited by conduction through the crust. The third stage of cooling starts when the near surface MO evolves compositionally to the point of saturation with feldspar. At this point, the cooling rate again precipitously diminishes, the rate of crustal thickness growth as a function of temperature suddenly increases. More work on incorporating chemical constraints into the evolving physical models of MO solidification would be worthwhile.

The giant impact model for the Moon has won widespread support. It seems to satisfactorily explain the high angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system, and the strong depletion of FeNi in the Moon. This model is usually assumed to entail no significant fractionation of nonvolatile lithophile elements relative to a simple binary mixture of impactor silicates plus protoearth silicates. Although the Earth may have been hot enough before the impact to be completely molten, analysis of the likely number and timing of major impacts in the prehistory of the impactor indicates that a fully molten, undifferentiated condition for that relatively small body is unlikely. Given selective sampling by the giant impact, any significant vertical differentiation within the noncore portion of the impactor would have been largely inherited by the Moon.

The lack of earth rocks older than about 3.8 Ga is frequently interpreted as evidence that the earth formed little or no subduction-resistant continental crust during the first 700 My of its history. Such models obviously imply that the pre-3.8 Ga earth was covered entirely or almost entirely by smoothly subducting oceanic crust. On the other hand, the thermal regime of the early earth probably tended to cause the oceanic crust at this time to be comparatively thin and comparatively mafic. The present earth is covered by about 50 percent oceanic crust, averaging about 7 km in thickness, and 41 percent continental crust, averaging roughly 40 km in thickness. Thus continentless-early-earth models would seem to imply a total mass of crust less than 1/3 that of the present day earth. Possible explanations are examined.