APPLICATIONS OF THE NUCLEAR MICROPROBE IN PLANETARY SCIENCE

Nuclear microprobes have been used in a variety of studies on extra-te rrestrial materials. Although by far the most used analytical techniqu e is micro-PIXE, valuable contributions have also been given to planet ary science using other methods available among the suite of analytica l techniques provided by the microprobe. Also a few studies of the app lication of synchrotron radiation to planetary science has been publis hed. Research aims are either to get a full analysis of very small obj ects such as cosmic dust or to extract elemental profiles over areas o f interest. In the latter case, these distributions may give insight i nto the temperature history of the objects studied. In this way single crystals, chondrules in ordinary chondrites but also phase transition s in iron-meteorites have been investigated. Being by far the oldest o bjects available for research and being conserved for billions of year s without serious wearing and erosion as would happen on earth, their detailed studies provide knowledge about the early history of the sola r system and on primary geological processes. (C) 1997 Elsevier Scienc e B.V.