OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Isotopes are useful probes of planet formation and evolution for at least two reasons. Some exhibit nucleosynthetic anomalies providing clues to their original location. Others undergo decay, providing age constraints. In this talk, I’ll discuss two applications of these ideas. The fact that the silicate Earth records different fractions of “carbonaceous” material in different elements implies that it experienced a change in the material it was accreting over time. The first ~95% was “non-carbonaceous”, while the last ~5% was “carbonaceous” and volatile-rich. Reconciling these constraints with existing planetary accretion scenarios is not easy. In the second part, I’ll discuss the idea that the pile-up of lunar ages around 4.35 Gyr is not the signature of magma ocean crystallization but is instead related to a tidal heating event. This story allows the Moon to be older (~4.45 Gyr or so), which is easier to reconcile with dynamical models.
