Potassium isotopic compositions of enstatite meteorites

Enstatite chondrites and aubrites are meteorites that show the closest similarities to the Earth in many isotope systems that undergo mass-independent and mass-dependent isotopic fractionations. Due to the analytical challenges to obtain high-precision K isotopic compositions in the past, potential differences in K isotopic compositions between enstatite meteorites and the Earth remained uncertain. We report the first high-precision K isotopic compositions of eight enstatite chondrites and four aubrites and find that there is a significant variation of K isotopic compositions among enstatite meteorites (from −2.34‰ to −0.18‰). However, K isotopic compositions of nearly all enstatite meteorites scatter around the bulk silicate earth (BSE) value. The average K isotopic composition of the eight enstatite chondrites (−0.47 ± 0.57‰) is indistinguishable from the BSE value (−0.48 ± 0.03‰), thus further corroborating the isotopic similarity between Earth's building blocks and enstatite meteorite precursors. We found no correlation of K isotopic compositions with the chemical groups, petrological types, shock degrees, and terrestrial weathering conditions; however, the variation of K isotopes among enstatite meteorite can be attributed to the parent-body processing. Our sample of the main-group aubrite MIL 13004 is exceptional and has an extremely light K isotopic composition (δ⁴¹K = −2.34 ± 0.12‰). We attribute this unique K isotopic feature to the presence of abundant djerfisherite inclusions in our sample because this K-bearing sulfide mineral is predicted to be enriched in ³⁹K during equilibrium exchange with silicates.