Potassium‐rich sandstones within the Gale impact crater, Mars: The APXS perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The Alpha Particle X‐ray spectrometer (APXS) on board the Curiosity rover at the Kimberley location within Gale crater, Mars, analyzed basaltic sandstones that are characterized by potassium enrichments of 2 to 8 times estimates for average Martian crust. They are the most potassic rocks sampled on Mars to date. They exhibit elevated Fe, Mg, Mn and Zn and depleted Na, Al, and Si. These compositional characteristics are common to other potassic sedimentary rocks analyzed by APXS at Gale but distinct from other landing sites and Martian meteorites. CheMin and APXS analysis of a drilled sample indicate mineralogy dominated by sanidine, Ca‐rich and Ca‐poor clinopyroxene, magnetite, olivine, and andesine. The anhydrous mineralogy of the Kimberley sample, and the normative mineralogy derived from APXS of other Bathurst class rocks, together indicate provenance from one or more potassium‐rich magmatic or impact‐generated source rocks on the rim of Gale crater or beyond. Elevated Zn, Ge, and Cu suggest that a localized area of the source region(s) experienced hydrothermal alteration, which was subsequently eroded, dispersed, and diluted throughout the unaltered sediment during transport and deposition. The identification of the basaltic, high potassium Bathurst class and other distinct rock compositional classes by the APXS, attests to the diverse chemistry of crustal rocks within and in the vicinity of Gale crater. We conclude that weathering, transport, and diagenesis of the sediment did not occur in a warm and wet environment, but instead under relatively cold and wet conditions, perhaps more fitting with processes typical of glacial/periglacial environments.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".