New minerals observed on a piece of meteorite

Minerals had not been seen in nature before this scientific discovery.

A team of Canadian researchers have claimed to have discovered two new minerals – and possibly a third – after studying a piece of meteorite that crashed in East Africa, according to reports. guardian.

The meteorite, which is no less than the ninth largest meteorite recorded on earth, is two meters wide, and was discovered in Somalia in 2020. A piece of it about 70 grams, made mainly of iron, was extracted and sent to the University of Alberta.

While classifying the rock, Professor Chris Hurd of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences noticed “unusual” minerals. Then he asked the head of the laboratory department at the university to study the meteorite piece.

Chris Hurd saw front guardian.

“It was phenomenal. Most of the time it takes a lot of work and research to say there’s a new mineral.”

Elaliite and Elkinstantonite

Minerals similar to those discovered synthetically were created in a lab in the 1980s, but have never been recorded as occurring in nature. “I never imagined that I would one day be involved in describing new minerals just by studying on a piece of meteorite,” Chris Hurd stated again.

The minerals are named elaliite and elkinstantonite, in reference to where they were found (El Ali in Somalia) and to Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a NASA researcher working on the Mineral-Rich Asteroid Exploration Project: (16) Psyche.

“She did a lot of work on the formation of planetary cores, iron-nickel cores, and our closest element is iron meteorites, so it made sense to name a mineral after her,” Chris Hurd justified.

Therefore, researchers at the University of Alberta would like to study other samples of the meteorite, but it cannot be tracked now and can be purchased and then transported to China.