[meteorite-list] New mineral in NWA 1934 discovered: Brearleyite

[karmaka]

New mineral in NWA 1934 discovered: Brearleyite

" Researchers at Cal­tech and sev­eral author insti­tu­tions have named a newly dis­cov­ered min­eral in a mete­orite, “brear­leyite,” in recog­ni­tion of Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico Pro­fes­sor and Chair of Earth and Plan­e­tary Sci­ences Adrian Brear­ley for his con­tri­bu­tions to mete­orite mineralogy.

“I’m deeply hon­ored and hum­bled to say the least,” said Brear­ley. “It doesn’t hap­pen to too many people.”

Brear­leyite is an extremely rare, fine-grained min­eral that is a new mete­oritic Ca-Al (calcium-aluminum) and Cl-rich phase. The sam­ple was dis­cov­ered in a car­bona­ceous chon­drite mete­orite found in North­west Africa in 2003. It likely formed from a reac­tion of krotite with hot Cl-bearing gases or flu­ids on a small aster­oid, 4.56 bil­lion years ago. Krotite is another recently dis­cov­ered min­eral that is named after Dr. Alexan­dre Krot, a col­league and col­lab­o­ra­tor of Brearley’s at the Uni­ver­sity of Hawai’i, Manoa.

The min­eral and its name, “brear­leyite,” have been approved by the Com­mis­sion on New Min­er­als, Nomen­cla­ture and Clas­si­fi­ca­tion (CNMNC) of the Inter­na­tional Min­er­alog­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. Three round, thin sec­tions of one inch diam­e­ter con­tain the material. "

source:
http://news.unm.edu/2011/08/newly-discovered-mineral-in-meteorite-named-after-unm-professor/   (29th August 2011)

paper: http://www.minsocam.org/msa/ammin/toc/Abstracts/2011_Abstracts/AS11_Abstracts/Ma_p1199_11.pdf

Best wishes to you all

Martin