Monday, May 20, 2013

Holy crap the inside of this meteorite is gorgeous

NewImage

Holy crap the inside of this meteorite is gorgeous "The space rock pictured above is a chunk of the Alvord Meteorite, discovered in Iowa in 1976. The criss-crossing, internal structure seen here is known as the Widmanstätten Pattern. Commonly found in iron meteorites, the distinctive design is formed as the liquid metal at the core of a newly formed meteorite (comprising mostly nickel and iron) cools very slowly over the course of millions of years. (One estimate puts the cooling rate of these molten-core meteorites at 1°C every thousand years.) The result is a lattice of nickel-iron crystals unlike anything seen here on Earth. (For a more detailed account of this cooling process, see here.)"

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