Rare, ‘rule-breaking’ quasicrystal found in chunk of ‘fossilized’ lightning

January 16, 2023

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A tube of “fossilized lightning” from Nebraska’s Sandhills holds a uncommon sort of quasicrystal that had beforehand solely been present in meteorites and at atomic bomb take a look at websites.

Quasicrystals are supplies that break the normal guidelines of crystallography. Earlier than they have been first reported in 1984, scientists thought supplies might both be crystalline — with symmetrical, repeating patterns — or amorphous, that means randomly organized and disordered. As well as, scientists believed crystals might solely be symmetrical a restricted variety of occasions when rotated round an axis — two, three, 4 or six occasions.

Quasicrystals break these guidelines. They’re put collectively in an ordered sample, however that sample does repeat. In addition they have rotational symmetries that no extraordinary crystal can obtain. A quasicrystal with icosahedral symmetry, for instance, can show five-fold symmetry round six completely different strains of rotation.

Associated: Red lightning: The electrifying weather phenomenon explained

Quasicrystals have been first found within the laboratory. In 2012, nevertheless, Paul Steinhardt (opens in new tab), a theoretical physicist at Princeton College, and Luca Bindi (opens in new tab), a geoscientist on the College of Florence in Italy, announced the discovery (opens in new tab) of a pure quasicrystal in a meteorite that fell on the Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Russia. The researchers then created extra quasicrystals within the lab by mimicking the excessive temperatures and excessive pressures that is likely to be discovered when rocky our bodies collide. They then turned to a different place the place a really fast transition to excessive temperature and excessive strain occurred: the Trinity atomic bomb take a look at web site in New Mexico. There, they discovered extra quasicrystals in minerals from beneath the place the atomic bomb exploded.

“Because of this, I began to consider different supplies fashioned in comparable situations. And I considered fulgurites, supplies fashioned by lightning strikes,” Bindi advised our sister web site Stay Science in an e mail.

The newfound quasicrystal was found in Nebraska, near the village of Hyannis. (Image credit: Luca Bindi)

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Dramatic discharge

Fulgurites kind when lightning hits sand, fusing collectively the grains in a gnarly, branching tube of glass. Bindi collected a number of fulgurites in his seek for quasicrystals. The one which held this uncommon type of matter got here from the Sandhills of Nebraska, close to the village of Hyannis. This space of Nebraska is made up of grass-covered sand dunes.

The fulgurite was discovered close to an influence line that went down in a storm in 2008. In total, it was about 6.6 toes (2 meters) lengthy and as much as 3.1 inches (8 centimeters) in diameter. Nobody witnessed the occasion, so the researchers aren’t certain whether or not lightning struck the ability line and created the fulgurite, or whether or not the road went down within the wind and created the fulgurite with its personal electrical discharge.

A close-up cross section of the rare quasicrystal. — A close-up on a rare quasicrystal embedded in a fulgurite found in Nebraska. (Image credit: Luca Bindi)

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Both manner, the ensuing branched glass contained a combination of supplies from the sand and the metals within the electrical line, together with manganese, silicon, chromium, aluminum and nickel. To meld these supplies, the temperature of the sand should have briefly reached a minimum of 3,110 levels Fahrenheit (1,710 levels Celsius), the researchers reported Dec. 27 within the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (opens in new tab).

Attempting to find quasicrystals

Utilizing a scanning electron microscope, Bindi, Steinhardt and their colleagues discovered a 12-sided, 12-angled crystal with 12-fold symmetry embedded within the fulgurite. Quasicrystals with this type of symmetry are even rarer than quasicrystals basically, the researchers wrote of their paper; quasicrystals with 10-fold symmetry or icosahedral symmetry are extra widespread.

The invention factors to new locations to search for pure quasicrystals, Bindi stated.

“It demonstrates that transient excessive pressure-temperature situations are appropriate for the synthesis of quasicrystals,” he stated. Different potential locations to search out quasicrystals, he stated, is likely to be in impression glasses fashioned when giant meteorites or asteroids hit Earth, or in elements of the moon‘s floor which were hit by asteroids.

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