Strange ‘never seen before’ crystals found in the largest meteorite to hit Earth in the 21st century

A team of scientists has discovered an unprecedented type of crystals hidden in small particles of well-preserved meteorite dust.

The dust left a large rock in space that exploded nine years ago in Chelyabinsk, Russia. On February 15, 2013, an asteroid with a diameter of 18 meters (59 feet) and weighing 12,125 tons (11,000 metric tons) entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 66,950 km/h (41,600 mph).

Fortunately, the meteor exploded approximately 23.3 kilometers (14.5 mi) in the city of Chelyabinsk in southern Russia, flooding the area around the small meteorites and avoiding a large impact on the surface.

Experts at the time described the event as a great call to prepare for the dangers posed by asteroids for our planet.

The meteor eruption at Chelyabinsk was the largest of its kind in the Earth’s atmosphere since the Tunguska event in 1908.

It exploded with a force 30 times greater than the atomic bomb that shook Hiroshima, according to NASA. Video footage of the event showed space rock igniting in a flash of light, momentarily brighter than the sun, before creating a powerful sonic boom that broke windows in the nearby city, damaged buildings and injured the nearly 1,200 people.

In the new study, researchers examined several small pieces of space rock, known as meteorite dust, that remained after the meteor explosion.

Normally, meteorites produce very little dust when they burn, but scientists ignore these tiny particles because they are too small to be found, scattered by the wind, dropped into water, or polluted the environment.

However, after the Chelyabinsk meteor exploded, a large cloud of dust remained in the atmosphere for more than four days and eventually rained down on the Earth’s surface, according to NASA. Fortunately, layers of snow falling shortly before and after the event trapped some dust samples and held them up until scientists retrieved them shortly.

Scientists have discovered new types of crystals when examining dust droplets under a standard microscope. One of these tiny structures, large enough to be seen only under a microscope, was focused in the center of one of the slides when a team member looked at the eyepiece.

And wherever it is, the team probably missed it, according to Sci-News.

After examining the dust using more powerful electron microscopes, the scientists found more of these crystals and studied them in more detail.

However, according to a research paper published in May in The European Physical Journal Plus, “crystals are relatively difficult to locate using electron microscopy, due to their small size”.

The new crystals come in two variants, in which the scientists involved in the study show “spherical” shells or “spherical” hexagonal rods, both of which have “unique morphological features.”

Further analysis using X-rays revealed that the crystals are composed of layers of graphite, a form of carbon made from overlapping layers of atoms often used in pencils, surrounding a central nanogroup. in the center of the crystal.

Scientists suggest that the most likely candidate for these nanoclusters is Buckminsterfullerene (with formula C60), a lattice ball of carbon atoms, or polyhexacyclooctadecane (C18H12), a molecule composed of carbon and hydrogen.

The team suspects that the crystals formed under conditions of high temperature and high pressure caused by the meteorite impact, although the exact mechanism remains unclear.

In the future, scientists hope to monitor other samples of meteorite dust from other rocks in the galaxy to see if these crystals are a common byproduct of meteorite eruptions or unique to the Chelyabinsk meteorite eruption. .

Source: Life Science