Untold story of Deccan Traps: Role of silicate Liquid Immiscibility

Volume 1 - Issue 1

Payel Dey, Jyotisankar Ray* and Indu Ray

Received: January 31, 2018;   Published: February 12, 2018

DOI: 10.32474/MAOPS.2018.01.000105

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Abstract

Role of liquid immiscibility has immense importance in petro genesis of basaltic magmas. Roedder, Weiblen [1,2] postulated that high silica and high iron glasses of the lunar basaltic rocks have widespread petro genetic significance. In lunar basalts, generally, the globules of dark brown glass appear to have composition equivalent to Pyroxene + Iron ore. On the contrary, it is significant that Washington [3] initially recognized that the residual glass in the Deccan Trap basalts should be composition corresponding to a mixture of augite and magnetite. The role of liquid immiscibility in basaltic magmas had been graphically depicted by Roedder [4] in terms of SiO2-(FeO+MgO+CaO)-(K2O+Na2O+Al2O3) diagram; characteristically the liquid immiscibility field in Roedder’s ternary plot assumes an elongated elliptical geometry relatively away from SiO2-rich corner. The compositions of terrestrial basalts like Deccan Trap [3] Palisade diabase sill [5] etc. fall close to the demarcated liquid immiscibility field of Roedder [4]. The samples of lunar basalt obtained from Apollo 11 and 12 expeditions were also plotted in the ternary plot proposed by Roedder [4].

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