Isotope anomalies in tellurium and palladium from Allende nanodiamonds

Abstract

The elemental and isotopic abundances of Te and Pd have been measured by thermal ionization mass spectrometry in a purified sample of interstellar nanodiamonds from the Allende meteorite, after combustion of the diamonds in an oxygen plasma. Small positive anomalies were found in 128Te (4.0 ± 1.5 ‰) and 130Te (9.3 ± 2.8 ‰) from three analyses of the Allende nanodiamond sample EB, and in 110Pd (9.4 ± 5.7 ‰) from two analyses of the same sample. No other anomalies of a significant nature were found in either Te or Pd. These results are consistent with the neutron burst model (Meyer et al., 2000), and the r-process based rapid separation model of Ott (1996) in that 128, 130Te and 110Pd are enha..