Impossible Crystals are 'from space'

reply to post by dcmb1409


agreed whole heartedly.

Not to even mention the fact that any alien race advanced enough to get here would have some sort of mining technology that would make having human slaves do it TOTALLY inefficient.

Think about it, self replicating Solar/heat powered nanobots would OWN at mining versus primitive humans.

Also, thanks for the interesting extra info concerning exotic materials in space. This is pretty exciting!

Cool stuff

What Dr Shechtman went through though, being turned on by his peers, is so sad. Bravo for him. Might do us all good to remember, now and then, when engaged in a thread or two, to treat each other with: (Go Aretha)
R E S P E C T.

I find this fascinating...

The Nobel laureate first created quasicrystals by rapidly cooling molten metals, such as aluminium and manganese, by squirting the mixture onto a cool surface.

By sending an electron wave through a molten metal "grate", the Israeli researcher was able to see how the wave was diffracted by the metals' atoms.

Under the microscope he observed that the new crystal was made up of perfectly ordered, but never repeating, units - a structure that is at odds with all other crystals that are regular and precisely repeating.

Dr Shechtman himself is said to have cried "Eyn chaya kazo", which translates from the Hebrew as "there can be no such creature".

And,

Quite beautiful'

The "forbidden symmetry" of the quasicrystal was first spied in 1982. Irregular shapes, similar to what Dr Shechtman was seeing, are found in the medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra Palace in Spain. The tiles that line the walls and floors of the palace are regular, and follow mathematical rules, but also never repeat themselves.

Quasicrystal structures tend to be hard, non-sticky and are poor conductors of heat and electricity. These properties make them useful as coatings for frying pans and as insulating material for electrical wires.

They are also found in the world's most durable steel, used in razor blades and ultra-fine needles in eye surgery.

Source

Peace

Originally posted by charlyv
You are partly correct, moldavite is caused by a major impact, however the glass is terrestrial.

Well scientists are not sure about that yet... it's only a guess. There are tektites found in regions where there was no impact found especially Libyan Glass which covers many miles with no trace of meteorite and there are meteorites found in the Sahara with no trace of tektites.

On the other hand tektite glass is found at nuclear blast sites such as the Nevada desert

Lots of theories, but no definitive proof yet

Originally posted by zorgon

Originally posted by charlyv
You are partly correct, moldavite is caused by a major impact, however the glass is terrestrial.

Well scientists are not sure about that yet... it's only a guess. There are tektites found in regions where there was no impact found especially Libyan Glass which covers many miles with no trace of meteorite and there are meteorites found in the Sahara with no trace of tektites.

On the other hand tektite glass is found at nuclear blast sites such as the Nevada desert

Lots of theories, but no definitive proof yet

Well gotta differ again, the current scientific 'accepted' theory is terrestrial.
The lack of any evidence of cosmic ray interaction with tektite glass pretty much proves that it could not have been in space, not only that but spectroscopic analysis of the gas inside bubbles found in moldavite show earth atmospheric composition. The composition of the glass is chemically identical with known sandstone deposits on earth.

I agree that there are a lot of theories about an extraterrestrial source, but the last 20 years of research has pretty much ruled it all out.

The reason that it is hard to find impact sites, to trace back the origin is that the molten glass ejecta was sucked up the vacuum hole left by the meteorite's passage, almost into earth orbit, and rained back down in rays as the earth spun below it. This is why there are vast fields of the same materials often thousands of miles from where the impact occurred.

Places where meteorites are found, and no tektites is understood because the force of an impact that would produce tektites would not leave any meteoritic material left, as it would be completely vaporized and homogenized in the environment. The Ries crater in Germany would be a great example of this, and is thought to be a source of moldavite tektites.

reply to post by charlyv


This also doesn't look like it came from space

reply to post by zorgon


Agree, it certainly does not, however it does resemble a regolith breccia, with metamorphic crystal growth which could be the evidence of the aftermath of an ancient serious impact! I have samples from Sudbury that look very much like this material.

Thank you all for the replies!

I am totally blown away by all of the info you guys found.

I feel that every now and then people really do get what they deserve and this Nobel prize is proof of that. I am sure he has the larger smile when greeting his peers

I will be keeping my eyes open when out and about for some of these beautiful cosmic crystals.

Namaste

I logged onto ATS today to read about SOPA / PIPA and what you guys thought about it...

How did I end up here, reading about quasicrystals? o.O

Ahh the beauty of ATS...

reply to post by Topato


Very well put. ATS is beautiful that way. I've been watching this thread waiting for zorgon and charlyv to continue this very interesting discussion. Please don't tell me you two continued via u2u...share the love. Come back...sniff sniff.

I feel like there is something just out of reach on this subject that, once illuminated, will teach us something quite unexpected. Why was this idea so vehemently rejected by peers? Gotta love when a paradigm shifts.

Peace

Update: Further Supporting Evidence found for Meteoric Source of Quasicrystals

In the summer of 2010, the researchers' experiments indicated that the sample was meteoritic and had come from not just any type of meteorite, but a CV3 carbonaceous chondrite -- a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite formed at the beginning of the solar system. "Now there was real motivation to turn this fantasy trip into a reality. It was a long shot, but if we could find even one sample there, it would prove the bizarre story we had put together beyond any shadow of doubt and provide new sources of material for studying this very strange meteorite that formed at the beginning of the solar system," Steinhardt continued.

Writing in IOP Publishing's journal Reports on Progress in Physics, Paul J Steinhardt and Luca Bindi reveal that new, naturally occurring quasicrystal samples have been found in an environment that does not have the extreme terrestrial conditions needed to produce them, therefore strengthening the case that they were brought to Earth by a meteorite. Furthermore, their findings reveal that the samples of quasicrystals were brought to the area during the last glacial period, suggesting the meteorite was most likely to have hit Earth around 15 000 years ago.

source