Lessons from the past
Researchers Jan Kramers and Georgy Belyanin found mineral compounds unlike anything on Earth or in known meteorites or comets in these fragments from the Hypatia stone , which was picked up in south-west Egypt in the Libyan Desert Glass field .
University of Johannesburg
Extraterrestrial stone found in Egypt
A mineral compound unlike anything on Earth found in Egypt , has geologists scratching their heads . By PPM Research Centre at UJ ’ s Department of Geology
A
recent study that analysed a small pebble found in southwest Egypt has cast serious questions on a widely-held view about the primitive pre-solar dust cloud from which our Sun , Earth , and other planets were formed . Prof . Kramers and Dr Georgy Belyanin from the PPM Research Centre at the University of Johannesburg ’ s Department of Geology in Johannesburg , South Africa , discovered exotic micromineral compounds in the Hypatia stone that are not known to occur on Earth , elsewhere in our solar system , or in known meteorites or comets .
Kramers was recently recognised as a ‘ Leading international researcher ’ ( A-rated ) by the National Research Foundation and is a geochemist currently specialising in dating techniques ( especially for hominin fossils ) and analyses of extraterrestrial objects .
In 2013 , Kramers and his co-authors announced that the Hypatia pebble found in south-west Egypt was definitely not from Earth . By 2015 , other research teams had announced that the stone was not part of any known types of meteorite or comet , based on noble gas and nuclear probe analyses .
However , if the pebble was not from Earth , what was its origin and could the minerals in it provide clues on where it came from ? Micro-mineral analyses of the pebble by Kramers and Belyanin have now provided unsettling answers that spiral away from conventional views of the material from which our solar system was formed .
“ What we do know is that Hypatia was formed in a cold environment , probably at temperatures below that of liquid nitrogen on Earth ( -196 ° C ). In our solar system it would have been way further out than the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter , where most meteorites come from . Comets come mainly from the Kuiper Belt , beyond the orbit of Neptune and about 40 times as far away from the sun as we are . Some come from the Oort Cloud , even further out . We know very little about the chemical compositions of space objects out there . So , our next question will dig further into where Hypatia came from ,” says Kramers . b
[ 32 ] MINING MIRROR MARCH 2018