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Space Science

Meteorite Strike Creates New Type of Mineral 37

Posted by timothy from the smashing-folks-smashing dept.
Ridgelift writes "Chinese researchers have discovered a new mineral created by a meteorite strike. A new form of chromite was discovered in the shock veins formed by the impact of the Suizhou meteorite. 'The shock of the impact created temperatures of about 2000C and pressures like those at 600 kilometres below the Earth.' Researcher Professor Hugh O'Neill says 'This potentially gives us clues to the orbital velocities of two bodies that come together to produce these shock collisions.' Along with the rare find, the researchers who discovered the new mineral get to name it."
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Meteorite Strike Creates New Type of Mineral More

Meteorite Strike Creates New Type of Mineral

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  • Naming? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 )
    Shouldn't the naming of a chemical be up to a standards body to decide? Take the primary color Squant as an example of the wrongheadedness of letting something's discoverer name it.
    • Actually you are confusing some random chemical substance with a mineral. Everything is a chemical when it comes down to it, but a mineral is "a naturally occuring inorganic crystalline solid with definite but not fixed chemical composition." In the geological sciences, whenever somebody or some group discovers a new mineral, they get to name it, with the stipulation that they cannot name it after themselves in any way. They may name it after someone else if they choose to do so. For example they may ch

    • Re:Naming? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Along with the rare find, the researchers who discovered the new mineral get to name it."

      So the name is going to be something like Wing Xiua ChingChang Jing Hua Xuchu?!? Just call it Wun Hung Lo for short.

  • Kryptonite!
  • A previous post [slashdot.org] of known minor planets in our solar system.

  • c'mon... (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by mOoZik ( 698544 )
    Is this really Slashdot material (pun unintentional)?

  • Mineral Names (Chemists Learned From Geologists) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @05:56AM (#7567003)
    I'm really not sure that this is very significant news. This does not appear to be a far reaching discovery, rather I think it "made the papers" because meteorites are cool and exciting, and a new mineral sounds novel.

    On the topic of minerals:

    Mineral names are always interesting. They often have absolutely no relation to the substance they identify, let alone follow a systematic naming convention. Many minerals have several names, some more accepted than others, some designated long before geology was a science, and most with little reason and only slightly more rhyme. So, since the names don't have to make sense, discoverers have a lot of leeway when naming minerals.

    Apparently this got started in the early days of geology before people figured out any chemistry. When someone found a chunk of something, it would get whatever random name seemed good at the time. Unfortunately, after chemistry was discovered, no effort was made to go backward and rename all the old minerals. So mineral names are something of chaos. We have minerals from actinolite, to kaolinite, to rutile, to zircon, and thousands of others that are almost completely meaningless to any well educated person who doesn't already know what they are.

    Chemistry, in its early formitive days as a real science, noticed the mess geologists had made of that nomenclature, and wisely decided to systematize chemical names. Of course mineral compositions are covered under the wider blanket of inorganic chemistry, but geologists still don't refer to minerals by systematic chemical names.

    Here's a real example of how silly things can get:
    One day around 1977 a geologist discovered a new mineral, and thus got to name it. He wanted to honor another geologist who had the last name of Thompson, but discovered to his dismay that there was already a mineral named thompsonite. But not to be deterred from his original intent, and knowing Mr. Thompson's first name was Jim, he dubbed the new mineral jimthompsonite. Which was all well-and-good, but later a monoclinic variation of the mineral was discovered, so it was named (following scant conventions) clinojimthompsonite.

    But that doesn't really tell you too much about the mineral. For the record, clinojimthompsonite is a soft amphibole group mineral.

    Guidelines for naming a new mineral generally revolve around how easy it is to pronounce, whether it honors someone in the field, and how much like some other mineral name it sounds. Compare this to the process for naming martian craters [space.com]!

    It's really not too weird to discover new minerals, although it's also not exceptionally commonplace; there are a lot of different ways to combine the naturally occurring elements in inorganic crystals at the Earth's range of temperatures and pressures.

    Definition of a mineral, with examples:

    For the record, a mineral is commonly accepted to be a mineral given all the following:
    (Note: these criteria aren't exactly set in stone, but I can't think of anything that's regarded as a mineral that doesn't fit them.)

    inorganic
    solid
    ordered crystal structure
    definite chemical composition
    naturally occurring

    From a practical point of view, if it's a naturally occurring crystal with a unique X-ray diffraction pattern, it shouldn't be too surprising if it's accepted as a new mineral.

    A few examples of what aren't minerals:
    Obsidian (volcanic glass) can't be a mineral because it doesn't have an ordered crystal structure.
    Coal isn't a mineral because, among others, it is organic.
    Various formulas of steel aren't minerals because although they're crystalline (microscopically), they are man made.
    • I'm really not sure that this is very significant news.

      I hope you mean it's not significant to you. Current estimates of the energies of large impacts are very crude. It would take the world's entire nuclear arsenal to simulate just one, and the complex nature of large craters (multiple rings, central peaks) means our knowledge of smaller craters doesn't scale up well. The presence of this mineral gives an indication of the pressure and temperature under the impact site, and therefore a guess at the or

    • The problem with using chemical names for minerals is that, typically, mineral compositions are so messy. Sure, they start off as a simple e.g. metal silicate or carbonate or sulfide, but then you get all sorts of substitutions thrown in of varying proportions.

      Besides, the chemical name doesn't tell the whole story. Allotropes aside (do we really want to call both graphite and diamond just 'carbon'?), trace contaminants and variations in crystal growth make a difference. Quartz is 'just' silicon dioxi
    • inorganic
      solid
      ordered crystal structure
      definite chemical composition
      naturally occurring

       Quite so - Curiously, ice fits this descriptor - and glaciers qualify as metamorphic rocks, though they have rheidities [unomaha.edu] (a unit of time) that are substantially different from those of most things we consider mineral or rock.

  • Downunder! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zapper ( 68283 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @06:15AM (#7567050) Homepage Journal
    "...600 kilometres below the Earth."

    Isn't that in space somewhere?

  • What if they named it something dirty and disgusting? Would the scientific community honour the name?
  • Hm. Guidelines exist. 'Shock Chromite' has a kind of nice ring to it, but...

    Names of minerals are a tricky subject, and there are a lot of fallacies- a mineral may have a chemical composition, a common use name, and belong to a general group of closely-related compounds. Because of this, the guidelines do exist. It's not unlike trying to name a species of organisms.A history of the Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names (CNMMN) [geo.vu.nl] demonstrates that this is not a subject touched upon lightly in the scientific world. (this comment is going to have a lot of links, because i'm interested in rocks and minerals. The info may be interesting or, as with the IMA info, useful and particularly relevant, so please bear with me.)

    It becomes an issue in the everyday world more than one might expect. For example, i have anAlexandrite [davesdownt...ckshop.com]ring, a family heirloom. It's gorgeous, it's stunning, and it's a rock rarely seen in the jeweller's.

    What's the difference between this and any other cut and polished 'ballistic missile from god'? (thank you, Mr. Watterson, for that beautiful quote.) It's pretty. So people remember it, although most people get it confused with iolite. [24carat.co.uk]

    Amethyst [emporia.edu]is just another kind of quartz.

    Rocks for which there is no scientific use frequently end up as jewellery, or even bookends, and i guess that's where a lot of the names get dropped. Rhodochrosite [britannica.com] becomes 'that pink stone there,' and Calcite [webmineral.com] becomes (and i do not jest) "Fiberoptic stone," or sometimes "TV stone," or i've even seen it just listed as 'refractive' or 'optical' quartz. (Yeah, i've gotten kicked out of the museum of science gift shop over this one, but they let me back in when i promised to shut up.)

    Personally, i think that such uses should involve the chemical composition in the labelling, sonce then people would grow up knowing the difference between nephrite and jadeite, [jewelrysupplier.com]and things labelled 'serpentine' [md.gov] (yes, it also talks about chromium)(see also here) [unconventi...darist.com]and 'amazonite' [emporia.edu]would then end up consistently identified. Red ruby would be "ruby- Al2O3" and people would learn to recognise it the way they did the contents of ordinary table salt.

    *sigh*

    Yeah, i know nobody's going to label Paramelaconite [webmineral.com](a tetragonal oxide of copper) for the common consumer... but isn't it a nice thought? For more on the naming of minerals, try and [gil.com.au] here, [minsocam.org] and also here, with the International Mineralogical Association. [univ-bpclermont.fr]

  • Make a knife! [hiwaay.net]

    For all you D&D/Conan nerds out there...

    You can also buy your own meteorite here. [meteorite.com]
  • I fear the future prospectors deliberately crashing meteors into the Earth just to create more of these rare minerals!
  • As others have pointed out, this isn't exactly earthshaking news. Now, if people exposed to the meteorite gained the ability to fly or shoot heat rays out of their eyes, that's different.
  • Potentially profitable for the person on whose property it landed, but it must be shipped off-planet for sale.

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