Mare basalt units and the compositions of their magmas

Molecular dynamics simulations

“…The main limitation of atomistic simulations comes from the fact that one must often bridge many decades in spatial scale and even more decades in timescale to describe the phenomena of interest [28,29]. As an example, we discuss here the problem of phase separation of a mixture of a polymer (such as polybutadiene) and its deuterated counterpart [30].…”

“…In fact, one envisages that the 'effective monomers' are formed by combining a few subsequent chemical monomers along the backbone of the chain molecule into one such effective unit of a 'coarse-grained' model [8,9,28]. For a chain length N = 10 a box of linear dimensions L x ×L y ×D, with L x = L y = 10.05, D = 20, containing 200 chains in the system is a good choice [62].…”

Chemical variation of the large Apollo 15 olivine‐normative mare basalt rock samples

“…Butler [1976] could not tell whether the hiatus signified inadequate sampling of a single unit (raising questions as to what is really meant by the term "group") or the sampling of two distinct units. Binder [1976] and Binder et al [1980] inferred from a synthesis of chemical data (but including defocused beam microprobe analyses, hence neither very precise nor accurate) that the A15 olivine-normative mare basalts consisted of three similar but distinct units. Each was controlled by olivine fractionation (i.e., separation).…”

“…However, the break does not coincide with any deviation from the linearity of the trend of chemical compositions, nor with any petrographic character other than that most of the more magnesian samples are among the coarsestgrained. No other basis for chemically and genetically distinct groupings [e.g., Binder et al, 1980] exists among these large samples.…”