[meteorite-list] New Quasicrystal Found in Russian Meteorit

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.unifi.it/art-2306-discovery-of-yet-to-be-observed-extraterrestrial-quasicrystal.html

Discovery of yet to be observed extraterrestrial quasicrystal
University of Florence
December 16, 2016

As reported in a study by a scientist of the Department of Earth Sciences 
appeared in Scientific Reports

A new quasicrystal coming from outer space surprised scientists with a 
chemical composition never previously observed. ("Collisions in outer 
space produced an icosahedral phase in the Khatyrka meteorite never observed 
previously in the laboratory" in Scientific Reports). The study is the 
output of an group of international researchers that includes Luca Bindi 
of the University's Department of Earth Sciences.

The new extraterrestrial mineral, the third one presently identified, 
was produced by collisions between space asteroids at the dawn of the 
solar system. Its discovery proves that such materials could be a lot 
more common than previously thought.

"Quasicrystals are unique minerals", reports Luca Bindi, associate professor 
of Mineralogy, "and its atoms are set as if in a mosaic, in regular patterns, 
but that do not repeat themselves periodically such as in ordinary crystals."

Up to now there were only two known natural quasicrystals (icosahedrite 
and decagonite) also identified by the research group led by Biondi. The 
first quasicrystal was identified in 2009 in a specimen of the Khatyrka 
meteorite, found in Siberia and held by the Museum of Natural History 
of the University of Florence.

Together with colleagues from Princeton University, the Smithsonian Institution 
and the Russian Academy of Sciences, Bindi and his team have returned 
to Siberia in 2011 where they collected further samples of the meteorite 
in which the other two quasicrystals have been identified.

"Whereas the first two crystals reflect the chemical equivalent of synthetic 
material discovered some years before thanks to the Nobel prize winner 
Dan Shechtman who had synthesized them in the 1980s", continues Bindi, 
"the quasicrystal material found now is something that has not been foreseen 
by laboratory experiments and it shows how little we know of the formation 
mechanisms of such materials that take shape and remain stable in exceptional 
conditions and have innumerable technological applications".