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Isotopic Composition of Nitrogen: Implications for the Past History of Mars' Atmosphere
Abstract
Models are presented for the past history of nitrogen on Mars based on Viking measurements showing that the atmosphere is enriched in 15 N. The enrichment is attributed to selective escape, with fast atoms formed in the exosphere by electron impact dissociation of N 2 and by dissociative recombination of N 2 + . The initial partial pressure of N 2 should have been at least as large as several millibars and could have been as large as 30 millibars if surface processes were to represent an important sink for atmospheric HNO 2 and HNO 3 .
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Citations
Cited by
The Sample Analysis at Mars Investigation and Instrument Suite
Mahaffy, P. R., Webster, C. R., Cabane, M., Conrad, P. G., Coll, P., Atreya, S. K., Arvey, R., Barciniak, M., Benna, M., Bleacher, L., et al. (2012) · Space Science Reviews · doi:10.1007/s11214-012-9879-z · Cited by 564
What we have learned about Mars from SNC meteorites
McSween, H. Y. (1994) · Meteoritics · doi:10.1111/j.1945-5100.1994.tb01092.x · Cited by 519
Mass-Independent Isotope Effects in Planetary Atmospheres and the Early Solar System
Thiemens, M. H. (1999) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.283.5400.341 · Cited by 397
Anders, E., & Owen, T. (1977) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.198.4316.453 · Cited by 377
Isotope Ratios of H, C, and O in CO 2 and H 2 O of the Martian Atmosphere
Webster, C. R., Mahaffy, P. R., Flesch, G. J., Niles, P. B., Jones, J. H., Leshin, L. A., Atreya, S. K., Stern, J. C., Christensen, L. E., Owen, T., et al. (2013) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1237961 · Cited by 295
Metadata
- Authors
- McElroy, M. B., Yung, Y. L., & Nier, A. O.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 1976-10
- Volume
- 194
- Issue
- 4260
- Pages
- 70-72
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W1983297922
- Cited by
- 175
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 23.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Isotopic Composition of Nitrogen: Implications for the Past History of Mars' Atmosphere. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.194.4260.70
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- McElroy, M. B., Yung, Y. L., & Nier, A. O. (1976). Isotopic Composition of Nitrogen: Implications for the Past History of Mars' Atmosphere. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.194.4260.70
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
