[meteorite-list] Nobel Prizewinning Quasicrystal Fell From Space

From: Yinan Wang <veomega_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2012 22:47:12 -0500
Message-ID: <CALpO9HezK2FyStFGC6mSqSVJsWFBjHwLD3_V2AnFMnsyCiHDCQ_at_mail.gmail.com>

You can see the original article here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/03/1111115109.full.pdf+html

They don't really talk about the original rocks, just the sample
they're working with is a few millimeters. Found in a claybed in a
stream in eastern Russia. So, no fusion crust, just some metallic
crystals.

Back story is pretty interesting:
"As Steinhardt tells the story, the Florence museum had bought it in
1990 from a now-deceased private collector in Amsterdam, as part of a
job lot of 10,000 samples. Bindi tracked down the collector?s widow,
who agreed to let the scientists look at secret diaries that included
details of an ?exchange? ? or smuggling operation ? in Romania. After
further detective work, including talking to a former Russian
secret-service agent who had helped to smuggle the rock out of the
country, the scientists found V. V. Kryachko, the man who in 1979 had
first dug the rock from sticky clay in the remote Chukotka region of
Russia, just across the Bering Strait from Alaska. Steinhardt and his
colleagues trekked out to Chukotka last summer to examine the site for
signs of quasicrystals, but have not yet published their findings"
- http://www.nature.com/news/the-quasicrystal-from-outer-space-1.9728#/b1

-Yinan

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 8:55 PM, <cdtucson at cox.net> wrote:
>
> List,
> Hats off to them for this fabulous discovery . Also, It does not appear to have a fusion crust? No scale cube either in picture.
> Does anybody know the weight?
> Thanks
> Carl
> meteoritemax
> Cheers
>
> ---- "Greg Hup?" <gmhupe at centurylink.net> wrote:
>> Jeff replied:
>> "No."
>>
>> Quick and to the point, I like that! :)
>> Is a name and/or number in the works?
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Greg
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jeff Grossman
>> Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2012 7:40 PM
>> To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Nobel Prizewinning Quasicrystal Fell From
>> Space
>>
>> 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
>> > www.LunarRock.com
>> > NaturesVault (eBay)
>> > IMCA 3163
>> > ====================
>> > Click here for my current eBay auctions:
>> > http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZnaturesvault
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > -----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 10:47:12 PM PST