[1] A variety of secondary mineralogies has been detected on Mars from both orbiters and landers, indicating widespread aqueous alteration of the crust. Many of these locales exhibit sulfates, which in some cases imply acidic fluids. At present, there are few constraints on the paleoenvironmental conditions that existed during formation of the widespread and diverse classes of secondary minerals on Mars. We investigated hydrothermal systems at three active acidic volcanic systems in Nicaragua, including Cerro Negro, Momotombo, and Telica. The recently erupted materials are similar in composition to the Martian crust and are undergoing extensive acid-sulfate alteration predominately in gas-dominated settings (fumaroles). We characterized the secondary mineralogy and local variables, including temperature, pH, rock and gas composition, and fluid-rock ratio. We find that these environmental parameters exhibit strong controls on the alteration mineralogy. The environments studied include pH that ranged from À1 to 6, temperatures from ambient to hundreds of degrees Celsius, and fumaroles to hot springs. The hottest and most acidic systems contained sulfur, silica, and minor gypsum, while moderately acidic and cooler fumaroles included abundant silica, gypsum and other hydrated sulfates, and phyllosilicates. A setting with a higher fluid-rock ratio but similar temperature and acidity was dominated by phyllosilicates and, to a lesser degree, sulfates. The characterization of aqueous alteration of basalts under a variety of environmental conditions provides a conceptual framework for interpretation of similar relic environments on Mars. Finally, while identification of phyllosilicates on Mars is generally thought to require neutral to alkaline fluids, we documented significant formation of these minerals in the acidic volcanic systems.

Several geothermobarometric tools have focused on clinopyroxene due to its prevalence in igneous rocks, however clinopyroxene produced in high-silica igneous systems is high in iron and low in aluminum, causing existing geothermometers that depend on aluminum exchange to fail or yield overestimated temperatures. Here we present a new clinopyroxene-liquid geothermometer recommended for use in natural igneous systems with bulk SiO2 ≥ 70 wt%, which contain clinopyroxene with Mg# ≤ 65 and Al2O3 ≤ 7 wt%. (1) T ( ∘ C ) = 300 [ − 1.89 − 0.601 ( X CaTs Cpx ) − 0.186 ( X DiHd 2003 Cpx ) + 4.71 ( X SiO 2 liq ) + 77.6 ( X TiO 2 liq ) + 10.9 ( X FeO liq ) + 33.6 ( X MgO liq ) + 15.5 ( X CaO liq ) + 15.6 ( X KO 0.5 liq ) ] The new geothermometer lowers calculated temperatures by ~85 °C on average relative to Putirka (2008, Eq. 33) and reduces the uncertainty by a factor of two (standard error of estimate ±20 °C). When applied to natural systems, we find this new clinopyroxene-liquid geothermometer reconciles many inconsistencies between experimental phase equilibria and preexisting geothermometry results for silicic volcanism, including those from the Bishop Tuff and Yellowstone caldera-forming and post-caldera rhyolites. We also demonstrate that clinopyroxene is not restricted to near-liquidus temperatures in rhyolitic systems; clinopyroxene can be stable over a broad temperature range, often down to the solidus. An Excel spreadsheet and Python notebook for calculating temperature with this new geothermometer may be downloaded from GitHub at http://bit.ly/cpxrhyotherm.

Since the discovery of the first exoplanets in the early 1990s (Mayor & Queloz, 1995;Wolszczan & Frail, 1992), questions about extra-solar planets have focused on their potential to support life. Over 4,200 exoplanets have been identified in the last 30 years, with active missions such as NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the University of Liège's Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope aiming to double this number in the next few years. To date, investigations of exoplanets have primarily utilized methods from the fields of astronomy and geophysics; knowledge of exoplanets is overwhelmingly limited to parameters that can be calculated from astronomical observations (e.g., mass and radius). These data have allowed for the classification of exoplanets by their size and stellar irradiance (e.g., Fulton