Photo: Nick Gessler/Duke University.
Scientists have identified two minerals never seen before on Earth in a 15.2-ton meteorite.
The minerals came from a 70-gram (nearly 2.5 ounce) meteorite slice, which was discovered in Somalia in 2020 and is the ninth-largest meteorite ever found, according to a University of Alberta news release.
Chris Herd, curator of the university’s meteorite collection, has been given samples of the space rock so he can classify it. As he examined it, something unusual caught his eye: some parts of the specimen were not identifiable under a microscope.
The scientist then sought advice from Andrew Locock, head of the university’s electron microprobe laboratory, as Locock has experience describing new minerals.
“The first day he ran tests, he said, ‘There are at least two new minerals in there,'” Herd, a professor in the university’s department of earth and atmospheric sciences, said in a statement.
“It was phenomenal. Most of the time it takes a lot more work to say there is a new mineral,” she added.
The name of a mineral – elaliite – comes from the space object itself, which has been called the “El Ali” meteorite since it was found near the town of El Ali in central Somalia.
Herd named the second “elkinstantonite,” after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, vice president of the Interplanetary Initiative at Arizona State University.
Elkins-Tanton is also Regent Professor in the university’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and the principal investigator of NASA’s upcoming Psyche mission, a journey to a metal-rich asteroid that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter, according to the space agency.
“Lindy has done a lot of work on how the cores of planets form, how these iron-nickel cores form, and the closest analog we have are iron meteorites,” Herd said. “It makes sense to name a mineral after you and recognize your contributions to science.”
The International Mineralogical Association’s approval of the two new minerals in November of this year “indicates that the work is solid,” said Oliver Tschauner, a mineralogist and research professor in the University of Nevada’s Department of Geosciences. in Vegas.
“Every time you find a new mineral, it means the actual geological conditions, the chemistry of the rock, were different than what had been found before,” Herd said.
“That’s what makes it exciting: In this particular meteorite, you have two officially described minerals that are new to science.”
Minerals created in the laboratory
Locock’s rapid identification was possible because similar minerals had been created synthetically before, and he was able to match the composition of newly discovered minerals to their man-made counterparts, according to the University of Alberta release.
“Material scientists do this all the time,” said Alan Rubin, a meteorite researcher and former adjunct professor and research geochemist in the department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“It is serendipitous that a researcher finds a mineral in a meteorite or Earth rock that was not known before, and often the same compound will have been created previously by materials scientists,” he added.
Both of the new minerals are iron phosphates, Tschauner said. A phosphate is a salt or ester of a phosphoric acid.
“The phosphates in iron meteorites are by-products: they are formed through the oxidation of phosphides … which are rare primary components of iron meteorites,” he said via email.
“So, the two new phosphates tell us about the oxidation processes that have taken place in the material of the meteorite. Whether the oxidation occurred in space or on Earth after the crash remains to be seen, but as far as I know, many of these meteorite phosphates formed in space. In either case, water is likely the reagent that caused the oxidation.
The findings were presented in November at the Space Exploration Symposium at the University of Alberta. The findings “broaden our perspective on the natural materials that can be found and formed in the solar system,” Rubin said.
The El Ali meteorite, from which the minerals come, appears to have been sent to China looking for a buyer, Herd said.
Meanwhile, researchers are still analyzing the minerals — and potentially a third — to find out what conditions were in the meteorite when the space rock formed. And the newly discovered minerals could have interesting implications for the future, she added.
“Anytime there’s a new material known, materials scientists are also interested because of the potential uses in a wide variety of things in society,” Herd said.
Credits: CNN Brazil.
