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Scientists have identified two minerals never before seen on Earth in a meteorite weighing 15.2 metric tons (33,510 pounds).
The minerals came from a 70-gram (about 2.5-ounce) piece of meteorite that was found in Somalia in 2020 and is the ninth largest meteorite ever found, according to a news release from the University of Alberta.
Christopher Herd, curator of the university’s meteorite collection, took samples from space so he could fit it. While looking at it, he noticed something unusual – some parts of the sample were not visible through the microscope. He then sought advice from Andrew Locock, of the university’s Electro Microprobe Laboratory, when Locock tried to describe the new minerals.
“On the first day he did the analyses, he said, ‘At least two new minerals there,'” Herd, a professor at the University of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, said in a statement. “That was apparent. Most of the time it takes a lot more work than that to say it’s a new mineral.
The name of one mineral — elaliite — is derived from the space object itself, which is called the “El Ali” meteorite because it was found near the town of El Ali in central Somalia.
Herd named another one of the Elkistantonites after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, president of Arizona State University’s Interplanetary Initiative. Elkins-Tanton is also a professor in that university’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and the principal investigator of NASA’s upcoming Psyche mission — a journey to a metallo-solar asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, according to the Space Agency.
“Lindy has done a lot of work on how planetary cores form, how nickel iron cores form, and the closest analog we have is iron meteorites,” Herd said. “It made sense to name the mine after her and to recognize her scientific contributions.”
The International Mineralogical Association’s approval of two new minerals in November of this year “suggests that the work is robust,” said Oliver Tschauner, a mineralogist and research professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
“Whenever you find a new mineral, it means the actual geologic conditions, the chemistry of the rock, that was found before,” Herd said. “That’s what makes this exciting: In this particular meteorite, you have two publicly described minerals that are new to science.
Loock’s quick identification was possible because similar minerals had been created synthetically before, and the combination of newly discovered minerals with man-made rocks could be combined, according to a University of Alberta release.
“The material scientists are doing this time,” said Alan Rubin, a meteorite researcher and former associate professor and research geochemist in the department of earth, planetary and space sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It is possible to create new compounds – one, only to see what nature is possible as a research study, and others … will say: “We are looking for a compound that has certain properties for some practical or commercial application, such as conductivity or high work. or high burnout temperature.
“It is only by chance that a researcher will find a mineral in a meteorite or an unknown terrestrial rock, and then very often the same composition has been created by material physicists before.”
Both minerals are new iron phosphates, Tschauner said. PHOSPHATE A salt or substance of phosphoric acid.
“Phosphates in iron meteorites are secondary products: they form through the oxidation of phosphides … which are rare primary components of iron meteorites,” he said via email. “Therefore, the two new phosphates tell us about the oxidation processes that took place in the meteorite material. It remains to be seen if oxidation occurred in space or on Earth after the fall, but as far as I know, most of these meteorites formed phosphates in space. In either case, the water probably reacted which caused the oxidation.”
The findings were presented in November at the University of Alberta’s Space Exploration Symposium. The revelations “expand our view of the natural materials that can be found and formed in the solar world,” Rubin said.
It appears that the meteorite minerals came from El Ali, sent to China to look for a buyer, Herd said.
Meanwhile, researchers are still investigating the minerals — and potentially a third — what the conditions were in the meteorite when the space rock was formed. And the newly discovered minerals could have exciting future consequences, he added.
“Whenever a new material is known, material scientists are very interested because of the potential uses of the material in society at large,” said Herd.
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