Il n'est pas de désert si vaste
Que ne puisse traverser
Celui que porte la musique des étoiles...

The Paris CM chondrite is honored by being presented on the news on French TV. Paris is fresh and was less altered on its parent body than other CMs. It will be studied by a consortium of French laboratories to unravel early solar system history.
Météorite Paris
To know more, click here (in french) - Meteoritical Bulletin  - Abstract


Dr. Violaine Sautter from the LMCM speaks (in french) about the Mars Science Laboratory project and the laser system that will enable geochemical analyses of rocks at long distance:
Robot aux yeux chimiques
Collection « Des étoiles plein les yeux » réalisée par Paul de Brem et Olivier Le Bihan et produite par CNRS Images et le CNES


Chloé BRAHMI, PhD student at the LMCM, has been awarded a Fullbright Stipend and currently works on coral biomineralization at the University of Hawaii.
Chloé Brahmi
View from her office with Diamond Head in the background.


New book about meteorites by Matthieu Gounelle.
Que sais-je les météorites

Meteorite sheds light on birth of the solar system.
A team of the LMCM of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle (Paris), coordinated by PhD student Giacomo Briani (LMCM and Università di Firenze, Italy) and in collaboration with scientists of the Université des Sciences et Technologies (Lille) and of Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble), have analysed an extremely primitive meteorite and discovered that it contains a unique and primordial rock fragment, which is thought to have remained largely unaltered since the solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago. The data show unprecedented isotopic variations of nitrogen and pose serious problems for current astrophysical models of light element isotopic fractionation in the presolar nebula.
chondrite Isheyevo
Image caption: the central image is a high resolution SEM picture of the primordial inclusion discovered in the chondrite Isheyevo. The NanoSIMS images are maps of the 15N/14N distribution in the inclusion and clearly show the presence of several hotspots, i.e. localized enrichments in 15N, where the measured 15N/14N values are the most elevated for solar system material.

Briani G, Gounelle M., Marrocchi Y., Mostefaoui S., Leroux H., Quirico E. and Meibom A. (2009).
Pristine extraterrestrial material with unprecedented nitrogen isotopic variation
PNAS, doi:10.1073/pnas.0900197106

Chemistry World
L'EXPRESS (in French)


New tool in the study of marine carbonate biomineralization.
Based on the analytical capabilities of the NanoSIMS instrument at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, in combination with the experimental facilities at the Centre Scientifique in Monaco, a new experimental method has been developed to label biomineralized carbonate structures with stable isotopes under essentially unperturbed growth conditions. These labeled structures can then be imaged with the NanoSIMS, which has a spatial resolution much better than 1 micrometer. Applied to corals, these new techniques immediately yield new insights into skeletal formation and hold the potential to rapidly advance the study of marine carbonate biomineralization.
porites
Image caption: The image shows a NanoSIMS image of a Porites coral skeleton labeled three times with 86Sr. All three labels are clearly imaged at a spatial resolution of about 200 nanometers. Below, insets showing morphological surface details of coral skeleton and a living coral nubbin in the aquarium during a labeling experiment.

Houlbrèque F., Meibom A., Cuif J.-P., Stolarski J., Marrocchi Y., Férriers-Pagès C., Domart-Coulon I., and Dunbar R. B. (2009)
Strontium-86 labeling experiments show spatially heterogeneous skeletal formation in the scleractinian coral Porites porites.
Geophysical Research Letters 36, L04604, doi:10.1029/2008GL036782.

Discovery of a unique micrometeorite.
Thanks to mineralogical, chemical and isotopic studies of a micrometeorite weighing a few micrograms, a franco-american team lead by Matthieu Gounelle identified a basaltic micrometeorite. It appears that this micrometeorite comes from a body so far unsampled by meteorite or micrometeorite collections. It significantly expands the inventory of planetary surfaces we can study in the lab. Results appeared on the 6th April issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. You can download the press release here and read this article in PNAS.
Micrométéorites
Glacial sand in the Cap Prudhomme moraine (Terre Adélie, Antarctica) is highly enriched in micrometeorites. A unique micrometeorite was found in 1994 by Michel Maurette. It is highly metamorphosed basalt unrelated to any other planetary surface in the solar system, providing clues on planetary crusts formation . Antarctica and glacial sand pictures: courtesy of Delphine Six (CNRS/UJF/OSUG) and Michel Maurette (CNRS-CSNSM) respectively. Art work: Michel Serrano.

Prof. Anders MEIBOM has received the European Mineralogical Union Medal for Research Excellence 2008 for his work in cosmochemistry, geochemistry and biomineralization.
Anders MEIBOM

To know more, click here

Découvertes majeures autour du diamant bleu de la couronne
Reconstitution virtuelle du diamant bleu de la couronne
La découverte récente d'une réplique historique en plomb du mythique diamant bleu, dans les collections du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, a permis la réédition exacte en réalité virtuelle puis en zircone (matériau imitant le diamant) de ce joyau royal, volé à la France en 1792. Les résultats de ces travaux, menés par François Farges sont publiés dans le volume 165 de la Revue de Gemmologie. Vous pouvez télécharger le communiqué de presse ici