[meteorite-list] Nobel Prizewinning Quasicrystal Fell From Space

From: Jeff Grossman <jngrossman_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:40:05 -0500
Message-ID: <4F039FE5.8010209_at_gmail.com>

No.

On 1/3/2012 2:41 PM, Greg Hup? wrote:
> Very interesting! Does this meteorite have a name or number yet?
>
> Best Regards,
> Greg
>
> ====================
> Greg Hup?
> The Hup? Collection
> gmhupe at centurylink.net
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>
> -----Original Message----- From: Ron Baalke
> Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2012 1:56 PM
> To: Meteorite Mailing List
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Nobel Prizewinning Quasicrystal Fell From Space
>
>
> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21325-nobel-prizewinning-quasicrystal-fell-from-space.html
>
>
> Nobel prizewinning quasicrystal fell from space
> by David Shiga
> New Scientist
> January 3, 2012
>
> A Nobel prizewinning crystal has just got alien status. It now seems
> that the only known sample of a naturally occurring quasicrystal fell
> from space, changing our understanding of the conditions needed for
> these curious structures to form.
>
> Quasicrystals are orderly, like conventional crystals, but have a more
> complex form of symmetry. Patterns echoing this symmetry have been used
> in art for centuries, but materials with this kind of order on the
> atomic
> scale were not discovered until the 1980s.
>
> Their discovery, in a lab-made material composed of metallic elements
> including aluminium and manganese, garnered Daniel Shechtman of
> the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa last year's Nobel
> prize in chemistry.
>
> Now Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University and colleagues have evidence
> that the only known naturally occurring quasicrystal sample, found in a
> rock from the Koryak mountains in eastern Russia, is part of a meteorite.
>
> Nutty conditions
>
> Steinhardt suspected the rock might be a meteorite when a team that he
> led discovered the natural quasicrystal sample
> <http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1170827>
> in 2009. But other researchers, including meteorite expert Glenn
> MacPherson
> of the Smithsonian Institution of Washington DC, were sceptical.
>
> Now Steinhardt and members of the 2009 team have joined forces with
> MacPherson to perform a new analysis of the rock, uncovering evidence
> that has finally convinced MacPherson.
>
> In a paper that the pair and their teams wrote together, the researchers
> say the rock has experienced the extreme pressures and temperatures
> typical of the high-speed collisions that produce meteoroids in the
> asteroid belt. In addition, the relative abundances of different oxygen
> isotopes in the rock matched those of other meteorites rather than the
> isotope levels of rocks from Earth.
>
> It is still not clear exactly how quasicrystals form in nature.
> Laboratory specimens are made by depositing metallic vapour of a
> carefully controlled composition in a vacuum chamber. The new discovery
> that that they can form in space too, where the environment is more
> variable, suggests the crystals can be produced in a wider variety of
> conditions. "Nature managed to do it under conditions we would have
> thought completely nuts," says Steinhardt.
>
> Journal reference: /Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences/,
> DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1111115109 <http://www.pnas.org/>
>
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Received on Tue 03 Jan 2012 07:40:05 PM PST