![]() The role of lab-created minerals in discovery “That’s what makes this exciting: In this particular meteorite you have two officially described minerals that are new to science.” “Whenever you find a new mineral, it means that the actual geological conditions, the chemistry of the rock, was different than what’s been found before,” Herd said. The International Mineralogical Association’s approval of the two new minerals in November of this year “indicates that the work is robust,” said Oliver Tschauner, a mineralogist and professor of research in the department of geoscience at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. NASA and Russia weigh options for astronaut return after spacecraft leak The European robotic arm controlled by cosmonaut Anna Kikina surveys the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship after the detection of a leak that cancelled the spacewalk on Wednesday December 14. “It made sense to name a mineral after her and recognize her contributions to science.” “Lindy has done a lot of work on how the cores of planets form, how these iron nickel cores form, and the closest analogue we have are iron meteorites,” Herd said. Elkins-Tanton is also a regents professor in that university’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and the principal investigator of NASA’s upcoming Psyche mission - a journey to a metal-rich asteroid orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter, according to the space agency. Herd named the second one elkinstantonite after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, vice president of Arizona State University’s Interplanetary Initiative. One mineral’s name - elaliite - derives from the space object itself, which is called the “El Ali” meteorite since it was found near the town of El Ali in central Somalia. Most of the time it takes a lot more work than that to say there’s a new mineral.” “The very first day he did some analyses, he said, ‘You’ve got at least two new minerals in there,’” Herd, a professor in the university’s department of Earth and atmospheric sciences, said in a statement. He then sought advice from Andrew Locock, head of the university’s Electron Microprobe Laboratory, since Locock has experience describing new minerals. As he was examining it, something unusual caught his eye - some parts of the sample weren’t identifiable by a microscope. Manitoba)ġ0 moments in 2022 straight out of a sci-fi movieĬhris Herd, curator of the university’s meteorite collection, received samples of the space rock so he could classify it. Data from SARAO's MeerKAT radio telescope data (green) showing the odd radio circles, is overlaid on optical and near infra-red data from the Dark Energy Survey.
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