It's about a Meteor “Extremely rare” because it contains an “extremely rare” combination of aluminum and copper and 'quasicrystals'.
The Italian Space Agency (ASI) announced a discovery today Micro meteorite Made up of “materials with improbable symmetry”, so-called “quasicrystals”, it is “one of the rarest”. Tierra.
It's about a Meteor “Extremely rare” because it contains an “extremely rare” combination of aluminum and copper and 'quasicrystals', Israeli scientist Daniel Schechtman, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011 for demonstrating ordered but non-periodic structures.
This “strange” and tiny extraterrestrial rock, 100 micrometers, Described in the journal Communications Earth & EnvironmentThe study was carried out by a team of researchers from the University of Bari (South), Florence (North) and ASI.
This is the third Meteor found in Tierra Alloys of this type, as well as 'quasicrystals' of second nature, were recovered in 2011 at Kadyrka in the Russian Far East.
This “extraordinary” Meteor The orb was discovered on Mount Cariglione in the Italian region of Calabria (south) by a collector who was searching the countryside for objects and noticed the object's “strange and unusual metallic luster”.
Later, he decided to send it to experts from the University of Bari to examine it, who immediately determined its spatial origin.
'Quasicrystals' are materials in which the atoms are arranged like a mosaic in regular patterns but, unlike normal crystals, do not repeat themselves and are very valuable in various industrial fields.
“This research shows the still unknown universe of nanoscale mineral phases, which still surprises us,” said ASI's Paola Manzari, a scientist at the Matera Space Center (South).
Giuseppe Mastronuzzi, director of the Department of Geosciences at the University of Bari, thought the stone proved both physics and chemistry that 'quasicrystals' can form “spontaneously in nature”. (with information from EFE)
