One of the major components of concrete has been discovered by a team of scientists in the meteorite (NWA 1934) found in northwest Africa as reported in the In the May-June issue of the journal American Mineralogist.
This is the first time that a totally manmade chemical compound has been found to exist in a meteorite that is 4.5 billion years old.
The new mineral (strictly newly discovered in a meteorite) called krotite was found in a high temperature inclusion in the meteorite NWA 1934 that has been dubbed "Cracked Egg". Krotite is named for Alexander N. Krot, a cosmochemist at the University of Hawaii, in recognition of his significant contributions to the understanding of early solar system processes.
Krotite turns out to be calcium aluminum oxide (CaAl2O4) a common component of high temperature concrete used in refractory processes. This material requires minimum temperature of (2,732°F) to be processed in manmade concrete. Low pressure is also a requirement to create the molecular arrangement of refractory concrete.
The discovery is the first concrete (no pun) evidence of the high temperature and low pressure that existed during the refractory phase of solar nebulae that occurred 4.5 billion years ago.
The paper is entitled "Krotite, CaAl2O4, a new refractory mineral from the NWA 1934 meteorite." It is authored by Chi Ma (California Institute of Technology), Anthony R. Kampf (Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County), Harold C. Connolly Jr. (City University of New York and American Museum of Natural History), John R. Beckett (California Institute of Technology), George R. Rossman (California Institute of Technology), Stuart A. Sweeney Smith (who was a NSF funded Research for Undergraduate (REU) student at City University of New York/American Museum of Natural History) and Devin L. Schrader (University of Arizona).
The discovery was reviewed at the EurekaAlert web site on May 6, 2011.
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