Identification and Description of a Silicic Volcaniclastic Layer in Gale Crater, Mars, Using Active Neutron Interrogation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons instrument aboard the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, has been used to map a stratigraphically conformable layer of high‐SiO material in Gale crater. Previous work has shown that this material contains tridymite, a high‐temperature/low‐pressure felsic mineral, interpreted to have a volcanic source rock. We describe several characteristics including orientation, extent, hydration, and geochemistry, consistent with a volcaniclastic material conformably deposited within a lacustrine mudstone succession. Relationships with widely dispersed alteration features and orbital detections of hydrated SiO suggest that this high‐SiO layer extends at least 17 km laterally. Mineralogical abundances previously reported for this high‐SiO material indicated that hydrous species were restricted to the amorphous (non‐crystalline) fraction, which is dominated by SiO . The low mean bulk hydration of this high‐SiO layer (1.85 0.13 wt.% water‐equivalent hydrogen) is consistent with silicic glass in addition to opal‐A and opal‐CT. Persistent volcanic glass and tridymite in addition to opal in an ancient sedimentary unit indicates that the conversion to more ordered forms of crystalline SiO has not proceeded to completion and that this material has had only limited exposure to water since it originally erupted, despite having been transported in a fluviolacustrine system. Our results, including the conformable nature, large areal extent, and presence of volcanic glass, indicate that this high‐SiO material is derived from the product of evolved magma on Mars. This is the first identification of a silicic volcaniclastic layer on another planet and has important implications for magma evolution mechanisms on single‐plate planets.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".