Space & Astronomy

New mineral 'kuratite' found in meteorite

By T.K. Randall
March 23, 2014 ·  9 comments

A fragment of the D'Orbigny meteorite. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 2.0 Jon Taylor The 16.55kg space rock known as D'Orbigny was first picked up by a farmer plowing his fields in Argentina back in 1979. Originally believed to be an Indian artifact, it took more than two decades for scientists to recognize it as an object that had come from space.

The late Dr Gero Kurat and his team spent many years examining and documenting the meteorite which turned out to be a very rare achondrite with unusually prominent vesicles. The most remarkable thing of all however was the discovery of a strange iron-aluminum-titanium-silicate within it that the researchers were unable to identify.This mysterious mineral has since been officially recognized as a completely new find, earning it the name "kuratite" after Dr Kurat who sadly died back in 2009.

Scientists will now be attempting to learn as much as possible about this new mineral including how it forms and any potential applications it might have.

Source: Sci-News.com | Comments (9)

Tags: Meteorite, Kuratite