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The Wedderburn meteorite landed in Wedderburn, Australia in 1951, and has spent most of it's life on Earth in the Museums Victoria's collection in Melbourne. However, researchers from CalTech, led by mineralologist Chi Ma, recently visited the collection and examined a segment of the Wedderburn meteorite (chunks of it have been taken away by scientists for research over the years). The CalTech team discovered something amazing: a new mineral, unseen before on Earth.
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The 220 gram meteorite is thought to have come from an old planet that no longer exists. As it exploded, meteorites from it's core got thrown into space and this one found Earth, after circling around in space for a few million years. The new mineral that the researchers found is assumed to be material from the core of this now extinct planet.
The new mineral inside the Wedderburn meteorite appears microscopically as small white crystals and is a combination of carbon and iron atoms, set together in a particular pattern. Dr. Stuart Mills, Museums Victoria's senior geosciences curator said "This meteorite had an abundance of carbon in it. And as it slowly cooled down, the iron and carbon came together and formed this mineral."
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The mineral has been named 'edscottite' after Edward Scott, a pioneering cosmochemist from the University of Hawaii. Although experts have found many new minerals over the years, to find one that comes from the core of another planet is rare. Edscottite has been observed inside smelters, when iron gets smelted into steel - but it has never been seen before as a natural process.
Every new discovery is a step toward knowing more about the Earth's incredible history and the secrets of space.
Unknown Mineral Found Inside Million Year Old Meteorite
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