A portion of the El Ali meteorite, now in the U of A meteorite collection, contains two… [+] minerals never seen on Earth.
University of Alberta
A team of researchers has discovered at least two new minerals never before seen on Earth in a 15-ton meteorite found two years ago in Somalia, the ninth largest meteorite ever found.
“Whenever you find a new mineral, it means that the actual geological conditions, the chemistry of the rock, were different than what was found before,” says Chris Herd, a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. and University Commissioner. from the Alberta Meteorite Collection. “That’s what makes this exciting: In this particular meteorite you have two officially described minerals that are new to science.”
The two minerals found came from a single 70-gram slice that was sent to the university for classification, and already there appears to be a third potential mineral to consider. If researchers were to get more samples of the massive meteorite, there’s a chance they’d find even more, Herd said.
The two newly discovered minerals have been named elaliite and elkinstantonite. The first is named after the meteorite itself, named the “El Ali” meteorite because it was found lying on the floor of a valley used as camel pasture near the town of El Ali in Somalia’s Hiiraan region . Herd named the second mineral after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, vice president of the ASU Interplanetary Initiative, professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and principal investigator of the upcoming Psyche mission from NASA.
“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 is iron meteorites. So it made sense to name it after a mineral and to recognize their contributions to science,” explains Herd.
In collaboration with researchers at UCLA and the California Institute of Technology, Herd classified the El Ali meteorite as an iron-silicate meteorite, one of more than 350 known.
As Herd analyzed the meteorite to classify it, he saw something that caught his attention. He brought in the expertise of Andrew Locock, head of the U of A’s Electron Microprobe Laboratory, who has been involved in other new mineral descriptions.
“The first day he did some analysis, he said, ‘You’ve got at least two new minerals,'” Herd says. “That was phenomenal. Most of the time it takes a lot more work than that to say there’s a new mineral.”
Researchers continue to examine the minerals to determine what they can tell us about the conditions of the meteorite when it formed.
“That’s my experience: how do you explain the geological processes and the geological history of the asteroid that this rock was part of,” says Herd. “I never thought I would be involved in describing new minerals just by virtue of working on a meteorite.”
“Whenever there is a new material that is known, materials scientists are also interested in the potential uses in a wide range of things in society,” Herd notes. Some minerals found in meteorites could be used as templates to create synthetic materials with unique magnetic properties and applications in new technologies.
While the future of the meteorite remains uncertain, Herd says researchers have received word that it appears to have moved to China in search of a potential buyer. It remains to be seen whether additional samples will be available for scientific purposes.
The researchers described the findings at the Space Exploration Symposium on November 21. Material provided by the University of Alberta.