Planetary Science and Cosmochemistry at the University of Manchester

We seek to understand how our solar system's diverse environments formed and evolved, and how they operate today. We study samples that arrived at the Earth's surface (e.g. meteorites) or were brought back by space missions. We also use observations from missions to other bodies in our solar system, from which we can determine compositions and infer their history of volcanic activity and impact cratering. We compare our data to models, such as those that simulate atmospheres, the cooling of asteroids and volcanic eruptions. These models are based on the same ideas we use to understand our planet. So as well as learning about our solar system, we test our ideas and gain insight into how the Earth's environment responds to natural and man-made changes.
The compositions of the planets, including the Earth, were set as they formed in a disk of dust and gas that circled the growing sun 4.56 billion years ago. Clumps of dust grains were flash-heated into melt droplets that rapidly cooled: chondrules. Chondrule formation removed species that are driven off by heat ("volatiles", like water). By making "chondrules" in the lab and comparing them to meteorite samples we will understand the composition of the disk and try to identify the heating mechanism (lightning, shock waves, impacts). The first asteroids - planetesimals - were formed from chondrules and other grains, some of which had never been hot. Fast-decaying radioactivity heated planetesimals, and as planetesimals cooled they were bombarded until the disk had dissipated - this led to more volatile loss. By studying meteorites from these planetesimals we will track the history of heating and cooling and impact processing to understand the starting compositions of planets, to characterise the impacts that shaped the early solar system, and to learn whether radioactivity was equally distributed in the disk or shows evidence of having been introduced from a nearby star as the solar system was forming.
Some meteorites are rich in volatiles. We will learn how their volatile content evolved, and test whether they may represent a source that replenished the planets. We will also test minute particles of dust that float down through our atmosphere to see if they sample another source, such as comets. We will study whether microbes can live on carbon-rich material in some meteorites, and so whether this material could serve as fuel for life beyond Earth.
Since the planets formed, their crusts have been modified by impacts, by volcanic activity, and by water flows. Impacts provide a source of heat that can change the structures of rocks - some enigmatic rocks on the Moon offer the chance to study how this occurs and learn about a major process in the evolution of planetary crusts across the solar system. Lunar volcanic activity is evident in the volcanic pyroclastic deposits that now drape the surface around volcanic vents. Using images of these volcanic centres, and the structure of volcanic rocks brought back from the Moon, we will find out how rapidly the material was blasted out of the lunar interior. Since expanding gases power such eruptions, this in turn will provide insights into the concentration of volatiles inside the Moon. We will examine a recently discovered Martian meteorite that appears to be multiple fragments of different ages assembled by an impact. From this we will learn how the composition of the Martian surface has changed over time, and how this has affected its atmosphere.
Planetary atmospheres provide an exciting opportunity to test the ideas we use to understand our own weather and climate. The Martian surface shows traces of a time 4 billion years ago when it had a climate very like the Earth, we will study how clouds would form and lead to precipitation in this environment. On Saturn, we will test our understanding of how a planet's spin interacts with its atmosphere by modelling the formation of hexagonal cloud structures around its North Pole.

Who might benefit from this research?
The beneficiaries of this research programme are the public, particularly school-age children, through education and outreach; high-technology instrument manufacturing companies with whom we collaborate and share improvements; researchers in other scientific disciplines and the public through technology transfer of specialist analytical capabilities to areas of societal benefit.
How might they benefit from this research?
Our goal is to excite and stimulate younger people, along with their parents and grandparents into an interest in science generally and planetary science in particular. Research group members designed and developed exhibitions, models and participatory activities involving cratering, how volcanoes and comets work, 'design a Mars rover', lunar samples, Mars meteorites, meteorite hand specimens and thin sections viewed through the microscope and a cloud chamber to show atmospheric phenomena. We particularly emphasize under-represented groups, participants meet female role models ranging from new postgraduate students to senior tenured academics who make up >50% of the outreach programme. We are evolving our engagement with Schools targeting Primary School Key Stage 2 children. As an age group that is crucial to inspire with interest in science to feed into their choices as they mature, we have designed and are implementing more engagement activities with Primary Schools.
We will continue to grow our public outreach, targeting to engage with at least 36 major public events over the next 3 years as well as engage with many schools, particularly primary Schools, and science societies. We seek to inspire more children to follow an interest in science and will measure our impact by how many take up science at GCSE and A level, through to University courses from the Schools we interact with.
Our research programme is based around designing and developing innovative analytical instruments and analytical techniques that can tackle novel science questions that can't be addressed elsewhere. We have a long history of innovation and spin-off in mass spectrometry, and have on-going and continuous development work of mass spectrometry components with Ionoptika Ltd, Kore Technology, SAI Ltd, Cameca, Thermo-Scientific Ltd, Isotopix and FEI. Cooperation with the companies improves their products and capabilities and gives us a competitive edge in innovation and updates.
The capabilities developed as part of our STFC programmes are also being transferred to other areas of societal benefit such as the detection and analysis of micrometer-sized radioactive particles released accidentally or deliberately into the environment which has led to cooperation and development of a joint programme with AWE (Aldermaston) and a funded NERC research programme. Climate and meteorological science is high on the political and academic agenda and this is an area of responsibility of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with the Met. Office Hadley Centre being the primary practitioner in climate modelling. We engage with the Met Office through our modelling of Mars and Saturn which is an extreme test of numerical schemes used for Earth weather science and may aid future model development. These findings will lead to future model improvements and evaluations of the MetUM suite of models; hence, via this route, other institutes who operate the MetUM will benefit indirectly, including: the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO; the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, and the Indian Ministry of Earth Science.
We are developing new cross-disciplinary research areas of societal interest using technologies developed in our STFC research programmes to radioactive waste management, the mobilization of heavy metals by microbes and space technology.