Strange Crystals Reveal Rock to be Ancient Meteorite

Strange Crystals Reveal Rock to be Ancient Meteorite

www.space.com

Two years after identifying the Russian rock's unusual composition, a team of scientists thinks it has nailed down its origin. The researchers say it is a quasicrystal formed under conditions far more likely in space than inside the Earth, and that its chemical composition of metallic copper and aluminum resembles what is found in so-called carbonaceous chondrites – the primitive meteorites that scientists think were remnants shed from the original building blocks of planets.

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This neat "rock" is actually made out of a type quasiperiodic crystal (or quasicrystal). A quasicrystal is very interesting in that it has a pattern that periodically repeats but is subject to some form of unpredictability. Also, it has the ability to fill a space endlessly and will produce as if it were a fractal. However, quasicrystals actually lack translation symmetry and so they will not, at some point, re-create their original pattern (in any direction). This is due to the fact that normal crystals can only posses a rotation-symmetry of two, three, four, and six-fold. Where as quasicrystals can contain odd-numbered symmetries like five-fold rotation.

Originally the concept of such crystals was created in mathematics being called "Aperiodic tilings" in the 1960s. Then, eventually, the quasicrystals were created in a laboratory. The crystals themselves are also different from normal crystals in that they contain an arrangement of atoms that is based off an irrational number such as: the square root of 2:1, as opposed to normal crystals that go off a rational number. (This is stated in the article)

Originally they were strictly synthetic. However, in 2007, a rock containing quasicrystals was eventually found in nature and it created a paradigm shift in the field of crystallography.

After two years of research they have concluded that this rock is of an extraterrestrial origin.

The reason I find this so fascinating is that, what scientists and mathematicians originally thought was man-made and unique had already been in existence in space, and not for just a short period of time either. The article claims that "quasicrystals are one of the first minerals to have formed in the solar system — in the top 250 — long before most of the common minerals found on Earth."

Are we really as creative as we believe?


www.space.com
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Impossible Crystals are 'from space'
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here is a specimen..



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Ah, I did a search for my title but did not find any thing. In any event, my article contains different information. If the mods feel it necessary to delete, however, that is fine.

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