Dr. Emily Worsham

Uni Münster - Planetology

Awards:

Pellas-Ryder Award from the Meteoritical Society and Planetary Geology Division of the Geological Society of America (2018)

Nininger Meteorite Award from the Center for Meteorite Studies, Arizona State University (2017)

Recent project work:

Project B3 is concerned with understanding the nature, origin, and volatile element budget of late-accreted material, and whether that material changed through time. Work done within project B3 has shown that Mo and Ru isotopic compositions measured for bulk meteorites are diagnostic of two early isotopic reservoirs that likely represent the inner and outer solar systems, termed the non-carbonaceous (NC) and carbonaceous (CC) reservoirs, respectively. For example, we showed that the relative isotopic behaviors in the CC and NC meteorites are distinct, suggesting that the isotopic characteristics within each reservoir evolved under relatively oxidizing conditions in the CC reservoir and under more reducing conditions in the NC reservoir, which is consistent with the interpretation that the CC reservoir represents outer solar system material (Worsham et al., 2019). Thus, Mo and Ru isotopes can be used to determine the relative proportions of volatile-poor, inner solar system (NC) and volatile-rich, outer solar system (CC) material within the bulk silicate Earth (BSE) (Budde et al., 2019) and other types of materials, including impactites from howardite-eucrite-diogenite (HED) parent body and the Moon (Worsham and Kleine, 2019a, 2019b). Results from these related projects have implications for material transport dynamics within the early solar system and for the source(s) of volatiles within the BSE.

 
Publications

2019

Budde, G., Burkhardt, C., Kleine, T., 2019: Molybdenum isotopic evidence for late accretion of outer solar system material to Earth. Nature Astronomy. 10.1038/s41550-019-0779-y

Worsham, E. A., Burkhardt, C., Budde, G., Fischer-Gödde, M., Kleine, T., 2019: Distinct evolution of the carbonaceous and non-carbonaceous reservoirs: Insights from Ru, Mo, and W isotopes. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 521. 103-112. 10.1016/j.epsl.2019.06.001

 
Conferences

2019

Worsham, E. A., Kleine, T., 2019a: Characterizing impactors on the HED parent body and the Moon using Mo and Ru isotopes. Goldschmidt, Barcelona, Spain.

Worsham, E. A., Kleine, T., 2019b: Genetic tracing of impactors on the HED parent body using Mo and Ru isotopes. 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Houston, TX.