Feiite (Fe3TiO5) is a high-pressure Fe-Ti oxide mineral recently discovered in martian meteorite Shergotty. Feiite is isostructural with Fe4O5, a high-pressure iron oxide stable at pressures >10 GPa. The stability of feiite has yet to be studied, as it has not previously been synthesized in the laboratory. To determine the minimum pressure at which feiite can be synthesized, we have conducted multi-anvil experiments at 1200 & DEG;C and at pressures ranging from 7 to 12 GPa. Major element compositions and XRD patterns indicate that we successfully synthesized feiite with an orthorhombic unit cell (Cmcm structure) in experiments conducted at pressures 8 GPa or greater. Relative to A(2)B(2)O(5) phases with similar structure, feiite can be synthesized at lower pressures. The coexistence of feiite and liuite (FeTiO3-perovskite) in Shergotty indicates that the upper pressure limit of feiite stability is above 15 GPa. To investigate the effect of oxygen fugacity on the composition and stability of feiite, we conducted an additional series of experiments at 1200 & DEG;C and 10 GPa pressure in which we varied the Fe3+/Fe-total ratio of the experimental starting materials. In doing so, we identified a minimum Fe3+ content necessary to stabilize the feiite structure (Fe3+/Fe-total = 0.26 at 10 GPa and 1200 ?). The importance of Fe3+ for feiite stability suggests this phase would not form in lunar or HED meteorites, where iron-titanium oxides contain little to no ferric iron. Though our experimental results can only place a lower limit on the shock pressures experienced in Shergotty, the determined pressure stability indicates feiite could also be present in diamond-bearing terrestrial rocks sourced from the upper mantle or transition zone. Additionally, the presence of feiite would be an indicator of source Fe3+/ Fe-total.

Minerals are information-rich materials that offer researchers a glimpse into the evolution of planetary bodies. Thus, it is important to extract, analyze, and interpret this abundance of information to improve our understanding of the planetary bodies in our solar system and the role our planet's geosphere played in the origin and evolution of life. Over the past several decades, data-driven efforts in mineralogy have seen a gradual increase. The development and application of data science and analytics methods to mineralogy, while extremely promising, has also been somewhat ad hoc in nature. To systematize and synthesize the direction of these efforts, we introduce the concept of "Mineral Informatics," which is the next frontier for researchers working with mineral data. In this paper, we present our vision for Mineral Informatics and the X-Informatics underpinnings that led to its conception, as well as the needs, challenges, opportunities, and future directions of the field. The intention of this paper is not to create a new specific field or a sub-field as a separate silo, but to document the needs of researchers studying minerals in various contexts and fields of study, to demonstrate how the systemization and enhanced access to mineralogical data will increase cross- and interdisciplinary studies, and how data science and informatics methods are a key next step in integrative mineralogical studies.

The flux of eruptible magma into a magmatic plumbing system influences eruption size and timing. If magma transfer is possible between two hydraulically-connected magma lenses, system destabilization can tap a larger magma volume than stored in any one melt lens. This study identifies two distinct magma reservoirs beneath Ambrym, a basaltic island volcano in Vanuatu, during the time period February 2019 to January 2022. Using InSAR time series and a data assimilation approach, we estimate pressure changes within two reservoirs (located 5-7 and 4-6 km b.s.l.). Furthermore, a theoretical model demonstrates that the reservoirs may not currently be hydraulically connected, despite evidence of physical mixing of magma derived from each reservoir during the December 2018 eruption. These findings further our understanding of how magmatic plumbing systems at basaltic calderas may change after rift-zone eruptions.

Nitrite, an intermediate product of the oxidation of ammonia to nitrate (nitrification), accumulates in upper oceans, forming the primary nitrite maximum (PNM). Nitrite concentrations in the PNM are relatively low in the western North Pacific subtropical gyre (wNPSG), where eddies are frequent and intense. To explain these low nitrite concentrations, we investigated nitrification in cyclonic eddies in the wNPSG. We detected relatively low half-saturation constants (i.e., high substrate affinities) for ammonia and nitrite oxidation at 150 to 200 meter water depth. Eddy-induced displacement of high-affinity nitrifiers and increased substrate supply enhanced ammonia and nitrite oxidation, depleting ambient substrate concentrations in the euphotic zone. Nitrite oxidation is more strongly enhanced by the cyclonic eddies than ammonia oxidation, reducing concentrations and accelerating the turnover of nitrite in the PNM. These findings demonstrate a spatial decoupling of the two steps of nitrification in response to mesoscale processes and provide insights into physical-ecological controls on the PNM.

We present preexplosion optical and infrared (IR) imaging at the site of the type II supernova (SN II) 2023ixf in Messier 101 at 6.9 Mpc. We astrometrically registered a ground-based image of SN 2023ixf to archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Spitzer Space Telescope (Spitzer), and ground-based near-IR images. A single point source is detected at a position consistent with the SN at wavelengths ranging from HST R band to Spitzer 4.5 mu m. Fitting with blackbody and red supergiant (RSG) spectral energy distributions (SEDs), we find that the source is anomalously cool with a significant mid-IR excess. We interpret this SED as reprocessed emission in a 8600 R-circle dot circumstellar shell of dusty material with a mass similar to 5 x 10(-5)M(circle dot) surrounding a log(L/L-circle dot) = 4.74 +/- 0.07 and T-eff 3920(-160)(+200) K RSG. This luminosity is consistent with RSG models of initial mass 11M(circle dot), depending on assumptions of rotation and overshooting. In addition, the counterpart was significantly variable in preexplosion Spitzer 3.6 and 4.5 mu m imaging, exhibiting similar to 70% variability in both bands correlated across 9 yr and 29 epochs of imaging. The variations appear to have a timescale of 2.8 yr, which is consistent with kappa-mechanism pulsations observed in RSGs, albeit with a much larger amplitude than RSGs such as alpha Orionis (Betelgeuse).

Carbon monoxide (CO) is predicted to be the dominant carbon-bearing molecule in giant planet atmospheres and, along with water, is important for discerning the oxygen and therefore carbon-to-oxygen ratio of these planets. The fundamental absorption mode of CO has a broad, double-branched structure composed of many individual absorption lines from 4.3 to 5.1 mu m, which can now be spectroscopically measured with JWST. Here we present a technique for detecting the rotational sub-band structure of CO at medium resolution with the NIRSpec G395H instrument. We use a single transit observation of the hot Jupiter WASP-39b from the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science (JTEC ERS) program at the native resolution of the instrument (R similar to 2700) to resolve the CO absorption structure. We robustly detect absorption by CO, with an increase in transit depth of 264 +/- 68 ppm, in agreement with the predicted CO contribution from the best-fit model at low resolution. This detection confirms our theoretical expectations that CO is the dominant carbon-bearing molecule in WASP-39b's atmosphere and further supports the conclusions of low C/O and supersolar metallicities presented in the JTEC ERS papers for WASP-39b.

Measuring the abundances of carbon and oxygen in exoplanet atmospheres is considered a crucial avenue for unlocking the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems(1,2). Access to the chemical inventory of an exoplanet requires high-precision observations, often inferred from individual molecular detections with low-resolution space-based(3-5) and high-resolution ground-based(6-8) facilities. Here we report the medium-resolution (R & AP; 600) transmission spectrum of an exoplanet atmosphere between 3 and 5 mu m covering several absorption features for the Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-39b (ref. (9)), obtained with the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) G395H grating of JWST. Our observations achieve 1.46 times photon precision, providing an average transit depth uncertainty of 221 ppm per spectroscopic bin, and present minimal impacts from systematic effects. We detect significant absorption from CO2 (28.5 sigma) and H2O (21.5 sigma), and identify SO2 as the source of absorption at 4.1 mu m (4.8 sigma). Best-fit atmospheric models range between 3 and 10 times solar metallicity, with sub-solar to solar C/O ratios. These results, including the detection of SO2, underscore the importance of characterizing the chemistry in exoplanet atmospheres and showcase NIRSpec G395H as an excellent mode for time-series observations over this critical wavelength range(10).

Close-in giant exoplanets with temperatures greater than 2,000K ('ultra-hot Jupiters') have been the subject of extensive efforts to determine their atmospheric properties using thermal emission measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Spitzer Space Telescope1-3. However, previous studies have yielded inconsistent results because the small sizes of the spectral features and the limited information content of the data resulted in high sensitivity to the varying assumptions made in the treatment of instrument systematics and the atmosphericretrieval analysis3-12. Here we present a dayside thermal emission spectrum of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-18b obtained with the NIRISS13 instrument on the JWST. The data span 0.85 to 2.85mum in wavelength at an average resolving power of 400 and exhibit minimal systematics. The spectrum shows three wateremission features (at >6sigma confidence) and evidence for optical opacity, possiblyattributable to H-, TiO and VO (combined significance of 3.8sigma). Models that fit the data require a thermal inversion, molecular dissociation as predicted by chemical equilibrium, a solar heavy-element abundance ('metallicity', [Formula: see text] times solar) and a carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) ratio less than unity. The data also yield a dayside brightness temperature map, which shows a peak in temperature near the substellar point that decreases steeply and symmetrically with longitude towards the terminators.

One of the frontiers for advancing what is known about dark matter lies in using strong gravitational lenses to characterize the population of the smallest dark matter haloes. There is a large volume of information in strong gravitational lens images - the question we seek to answer is to what extent we can refine this information. To this end, we forecast the detectability of a mixed warm and cold dark matter scenario using the anomalous flux ratio method from strong gravitational lensed images. The halo mass function of the mixed dark matter scenario is suppressed relative to cold dark matter but still predicts numerous low-mass dark matter haloes relative to warm dark matter. Since the strong lensing signal receives a contribution from a range of dark matter halo masses and since the signal is sensitive to the specific configuration of dark matter haloes, not just the halo mass function, degeneracies between different forms of suppression in the halo mass function, relative to cold dark matter, can arise. We find that, with a set of lenses with different configurations of the main deflector and hence different sensitivities to different mass ranges of the halo mass function, the different forms of suppression of the halo mass function between the warm dark matter model and the mixed dark matter model can be distinguished with 40 lenses with Bayesian odds of 30:1.