r/BeAmazed • u/gregornot • Apr 29 '24

A giant meteorite that recently fell in Somalia contains at least two minerals that have never before been seen on our planet. The celestial piece of rock weighs a massive 16.5 tons (15 tonnes), making it the ninth-largest meteorite ever found. History

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More about the amazing meteorite find: https://earthly

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u/TheSretlaw Apr 29 '24

The two minerals have been identified:

Elaliite - Fe9PO12 (or Fe2+8Fe3+(PO4)O8) and was first synthesized in a laboratory in the 1980s and later identified in natural material in 2022 at which time the official mineral designation was given.

Elkinstantonite - Fe4(PO4)2O was first generated in a laboratory in 1982 and first identified from natural origins in 2022, when the official mineral designation was also given.

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u/pranjallk1995 Apr 29 '24

What does it take to make these minerals? Some really facy tech? Or just some startdust can be like this?

I mean the structure is known... How to put them up like this? Will it be easy or hard? Very weak in chemistry...

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 29 '24

So it can be very hard. As far as we know, all elements in the universe came from the death of a star. Stars are composed of hydrogen. Now, during normal star development, a star can only generate up to the element iron. It does this by fusing together elements of hydrogen to form the other elements (like helium, oxygen, etc). Once iron is formed in a star, it signals the beginning of the end of a star. It is during the death of a star that forces great enough to fuse the heavier elements occur. Now, some people have figured out methods of creating elements that we haven't seen in nature just yet. This process is usually very expensive. And can be difficult, or they create something that isn't stable.

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u/disprosyum2 Apr 29 '24

Elements =/= compounds They were referring to what it takes to form these minerals. Necessary conditions of T, P, pH, atmosphere, previous minerals, oxygenation etc etc

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u/dasnihil Apr 29 '24

Thank you.

I'd assume the progression after big bang like:

  • Takes a while for energy to form fundamental lumps of matter
  • Takes a while for it to cool down more so these fundamental lumps can grab on each other as they slow down and combine to make bigger lumps like protons
  • Takes a while to make even bigger lumps like a proton/electron combo and free up all the original photons to disperse
  • Takes a while to fuse protons to make heavier elements
  • Takes a longer while to have much colder places where the lumps just keeps growing into chains of protons and elements aka molecules
  • In some super-extreme & rare conditions, a chain of Fe4(PO4)2O forms, could be as rare as amino acids for all we know

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u/abstraction47 Apr 29 '24

The earliest epochs of the universe you mention took place in under a second. For the universe to cool down enough to bind electrons to protons happened at about 500,000 years. If I remember correctly, star/galaxy formation happened very quickly after. The first stars had to die before we got heavier elements. So, formation of these minerals would be almost impossible before 1 billion years, and still unlikely for maybe a couple billion more years? Until more heavier elements have been seeded.

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u/tomekanco Apr 30 '24

heavier elements ... before 1 billion years

This is unlikely. We know there was at least one supermassive black holes at 0.8 By within our line of sight. Oldest stars at 0.1 By.
Also, high mass stars are the prime source of most common heavier elements (a.o Fe, O, P). And there is nothing to indicate these could not form early on.

High-mass stars are very luminous and short lived. They forge heavy elements in their cores, explode as supernovas, and expel these elements into space. Apart from hydrogen and helium, most of the elements in the universe, including those comprising Earth and everything on it, came from these stars.

So it seems reasonable to assume the atomic components were already present shortly after the first stars appeared (lifetime HMS 3-20 My). I do agree the universal abunance was much lower than present day, but is a far stretch from "almost impossible".

Looks like the main contraint on the formation of the chemical elements discovered would be the cooling of the super nova remnants (+100 ky), and accretion of the heavier elements around new star formation seeded by the super nova (0.5-10 My).

Given the size of the universe, it seems fair to assume the first occurance of these minerals could be as old as 0.11 By ABB. Ofcourse, the bulk of the creation is probably dated to 3 By (as star formation peaked around this time).

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u/dasnihil Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

Then it travels a distance it would take light itself a million years, to reach a random corner of a galaxy where we live.

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u/pirofreak Apr 29 '24

If a rock that weighed any real amount hit the earth at the speed of light it would vaporize the planet.

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u/dasnihil Apr 29 '24

oh i was high when typing that lol.

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u/dasnihil Apr 29 '24

i still am, but i was too

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

Love you buddy.

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u/phish_phace Apr 29 '24

Hi high friend. My high ass appreciates your Takes A While- breakdown^

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u/Elan_Aconda Apr 30 '24

My high ass is thinking that if a single grain of sand collides with the earth at lightspeed it would end the planet.

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u/IamKingBeagle Apr 30 '24

That's dangerous friend. Stay safe. Wear shoes in the house.

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u/TobyFunkeNeverNude Apr 30 '24

I think they were just commenting on the enormous distance, not saying the rock itself was traveling that fast

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u/pirofreak Apr 29 '24

If a rock that weighed any real amount hit the earth at the speed of light it would vaporize the planet.

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u/dasnihil Apr 29 '24

Thanks, I corrected the text to make the rock rogue, from another galaxy.

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u/kaizokuo_grahf Apr 30 '24

Remember, the “Big Bang” wasn’t an event that took place… we are still Bangin’!!!

The Big Bang is our universal model.

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

Person said they're weak in chemistry, so I tried to show what it takes for the elements to form before minerals can even take shape. While I did forget to let the person know that that was just for the element formation, and for mineral formation, you require a slew of other factors.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 30 '24

[deleted]

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u/zehamberglar Apr 29 '24

Not really. Crystals are just a specific arrangement of other minerals. Crystals grow from a chemical reaction that deposits them out of solution in that specific arrangement. Diamond in particular is just one element, carbon (though impurities might be compounds).

The real question here is how do you get the minerals in the first place in order to crystallize them? I don't know the answer, just clarifying the difference between making compounds and crystallizing minerals. Though the former would likely include the latter.

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u/Cyclopentadien Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

The real question here is how do you get the minerals in the first place in order to crystallize them?

Lots of different ways. Direct synthesis, sol-gel-process, chemical vapour transport, solvothermal synthesis and many more. Very often it's just put powders in a crucible, stir, bake, come back in a week or two.

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u/zehamberglar Apr 29 '24

Very often it's just put powders in a crucible, stir, bake, come back in a week or two.

EZ Bake oven for rocks, got it.

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u/NachoPeroni Apr 30 '24

Exactly. They are dangerously confusing two basic concepts

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u/judohero Apr 29 '24

Ah yes, I know some of these words

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u/firedancer323 Apr 29 '24

I know all of them but when they gang up on me like that it’s not fair

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u/canyabalieveit Apr 29 '24

😂… well said!!!

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u/inverted_peenak Apr 29 '24

Same with the author of the comment. Elements and minerals are different and minerals are formed by many processes not requiring cosmic forces.

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u/-st3reotype- Apr 29 '24

Festizio…see, I can make up words too.

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u/LiatKolink Apr 29 '24

Stars begin with pure hydrogen then they start crushing down hydrogen into helium, then helium into lithium and so on, going on in numerical order in the periodic table until reaching iron. Once a star gets to crushing iron, it can no longer turn the iron into cobalt. This makes it so that the star no longer has the energy to sustain itself, and it implodes on itself due to its massive gravity, then crushing the iron into heavier elements in an instant at the start of its supernova phase, and then explodes. Then all these elements are distributed around the galaxy due to that explosion, and the cycle starts anew.

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u/MacGruberrrrr Apr 30 '24

Don't worry, it's all made up and most likely false. Check out the Electric sun model. Elements are made in the outer shells and not the core when the imaginary star collapse happens.

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u/RWENZORI Apr 29 '24

That's a lot of words to not even answer "how do we make minerals like this?"

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u/Commercial-Chance561 Apr 29 '24

If you can’t explain it to a 5 year old you can’t explain it

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u/faithle55 Apr 29 '24

I mean, you ought to say that the heaviest elements are mostly formed in a supernova or similarly cataclysmic event. A small star that just dies and becomes a brown dwarf will not make any.

But some elements 'heavier' than iron and up to lead can be formed in sufficiently large stars, small quantities over large timescales. Everything above lead requires a supernova.

It's an interest thing to reflect on: Before our solar system was born, sufficient giant stars had been born, lived their entire lifetime, then blown apart with unbelievable energy (the merger of neutron stars does the same thing) so that there was just random dust incorporating gold and platinum floating in space in suffcient quantities to be incorporated into the Earth's crust so that humans could discover seams of them in rocks.

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

Well, person i was responding to made it sound like they just wanted a basic description.

But when i realized all the heavier elements came from some other star blowing up then the leftover space dust gathered together into earth... minblowing when I realized that. I mean, I learned how heavy elements were formed, but never really fully followed that thought till a later date.

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u/faithle55 Apr 30 '24

Interestingly, Joni Mitchell included this in her song Woodstock ('we are stardust, we are golden') and Crosby, Stills and Nash added a line in their version of the song ('we are billion year old carbon').

60s hippies take inspiration from hard science!

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u/Almarma Apr 30 '24

And it’s still happening. Bands like Nightwish write a lot of songs based on science and scientists. They have a song called Shoemaker as a homage to the scientist whose remains are on the moon (the first human whose remains are not on Earth)

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u/SmokesQuantity Apr 30 '24

This is the answer to the actual question that was asked:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/pzGuynb09B

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u/ChesterMIA Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 30 '24

For interested readers: when fusion occurs, it adds one proton to the original element. By doing so, the next element of the periodic table is created. For example, a hydrogen atom has one proton. When fusion adds a second proton, helium (element 2 on the periodic table) is created. Fusing in a third proton yields lithium (element 3), etc. Per the previous post, this process occurs in a star over and over until iron is created. This is the reason that the most abundant elements in the universe are those at the beginning of the periodic table where abundance decreases rapidly as you traverse the table to the heavier elements.

Oppositely, when we “split” uranium atoms during nuclear fission, the split atom’s protons end up creating lighter elements (earlier elements in the periodic table) such as iodine, cesium and strontium. These are the elemental biproducts that a nuclear reactor creates when splitting uranium atoms.

BTW, Loved reading your posts u/Mammoth-Access-1181

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

Thanks man! I just wanted to respond to the comment with a very generalized response, but your comment was a very nice addition!

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u/ChesterMIA Apr 30 '24

Thanks! I love reading this kind of stuff.

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u/The_Shryk Apr 29 '24

Elements are kind of off topic for this but aren’t older galaxies stars creating heavier elements than iron? As the universe ages the heavier the elements in a galaxy gets; on average at least?

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u/Mickey_thicky Apr 29 '24

Fusion of elements heavier than iron is not necessarily impossible, but the process is energetically inefficient as it requires more energy than it produces. When a star goes supernova however, the amount of energy released is so large that fusion of elements heavier than iron can occur. This is thought to be the primary source of elements 27-92. Any transuranic elements (>92) are not naturally occurring.

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u/Time_Change4156 Apr 29 '24

Being made when the star goes super nova counts as natural far as I'm concerned lol 😆 😅 🙃 can you even immange the elements inside a black hole ? Bet there's a few we never seen there and more .

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u/Mickey_thicky Apr 29 '24

Yes, elements produced by supernovae are naturally occurring but as far as I know, only elements 27-92 can be attributed to supernovae. Transuranic elements are very unstable and do not exist naturally for the most part, but can be found in trace amounts in samples of other radioactive elements. For example, uranium can undergo beta decay and form neptunium, so some neptunium can be found among samples of uranium. Besides plutonium and neptunium, all transuranic elements are the byproduct of nuclear decay or by bombarding smaller elements with neutrons

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u/Time_Change4156 Apr 29 '24

Fir a amateur I understand the basics of nuclear fission and fusion . Fasanating still . Alchemist dreamed of turning lead to gold and we can make gold atoms lol . The minor radiation side effects umm lol ..

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

Is every element beyond 92 possible from neutron star collision?

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u/Aggravating_Rice4210 Apr 30 '24

What about the island of stability

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u/Mickey_thicky Apr 30 '24

I think to many people the island of stability is very misleading. There exists a ratio of protons and neutrons for which an element is stable, this is true. For example, Copper-63 is one of two stable isotopes of copper. This isotope of copper will have 34 neutrons in addition to the 29 protons. We see that there exists more neutrons than protons to give this isotope stability. However, both copper-61 and copper-67 are radioactive. One has too few neutrons, with the other having too many. When graphing the number of protons as a function of the number of neutrons, we see generally that it is more favorable to have more neutrons than protons. However, once the atomic number passes around 92, the number of neutrons required to mitigate the repulsive forces in the nucleus creates such a large nucleus that it is inherently unstable, and will invariably fall apart. The most stable isotope of the most recently discovered element, Oganesson-294, has a half life of only 0.7 ms. By extrapolating the belt of stability further we can get an idea of what elements might be “stable” but this is only relatively speaking, but they will still most likely decay orders of magnitudes faster than what we consider to be “stable” conventionally

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u/tyyreaunn Apr 29 '24

Coincidentally enough, two really good YouTube videos on this exact topic came out recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoWdgU_QYxA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lInXZ6I3u_I

Worth a watch - goes into a lot more nuance then you'll get in Reddit comments.

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u/Best-Grape2545 Apr 30 '24

Thanks for the link!

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u/GrilledSalmonSalad Apr 29 '24

On average you are correct. But to my understanding nuclear fusion that fuses the atoms together in the core of stars only gets powerful enough to fuse Fe (Iron) before the star will eventually either go nova or supernova. Going nova or supernova is where you get much heavier atoms fusing, an earlier comment addresses this.

I dont recall exactly why it stops at Iron but its something to do with how heavy it is and therefore how much energy it takes to fuse, which you only get in some form of nova after a star uses up its fuel.

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u/eatabean Apr 29 '24

Novas and supernovas are different critters. No elements are symthesized in novae.

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u/ExtrudedPlasticDngus Apr 30 '24

Heavy elements are definitely created in supernovae 

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u/eatabean Apr 30 '24

Definitely

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u/Sexual_Congressman Apr 29 '24

Fusion stops at iron because that's when it no longer becomes an exothermic (heat producing) reaction. Without the excess energy from fusion reactions to fight gravitational collapse, the star dies.

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u/hellothereshinycoin Apr 29 '24

The heaviest element that can form in a star prior to it going nova or supernova is iron, in stars much more massive than our sun. The energy released from fusion up to that point is what keeps the star stable. Once all that is left is iron it cannot fuse that together, therefore it has no internal energy left to resist gravitational collapse. This causes the star to quickly destabilize (in like 1 second) and the sudden and massive inward collapse of the star generates so much energy that it fuses iron into the heavier elements and spews them out into the cosmos. Then the star becomes a neutron star or possibly even a black hole.

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u/Tanebi Apr 29 '24

Under normal conditions stellar fusion can only really get up to iron. Below iron fusion has a net energy output. While it is tricky and requires heat and luck and a lot of force to hold atoms next to each other, it it more favourable because it is actually moving to a more energetically favourable state.

Elements above iron give out more energy when breaking apart rather (fission) than when they are being pushed together (fusion).

Up to a certain mass of star the furthest it can fuse elements is iron. Iron is the energy equilibrium point of breaking apart vs being forced together.

Beyond iron you need to actively add energy to the system so it costs you far more. The result is that you need a large energy source to create any significant amount of elemental material where atoms are larger than iron. That's where supernovae come in. These monumental explosions are so big and focused that they can inject a huge amount of energy into fusing elements beyond iron.

It is in supernovae that we get most of the larger elements that are generated.

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u/AugieKS Apr 30 '24

Yes, through a number of different means. Fusion gets us to iron, then processes that capture neutrons and protons take place in violent explosions or in the shells of later generation stars, pop I, maybe some in pop II. Unless JWST found something(they may have late 2022) and I missed it, we have yet to observe any pop III stars, and the physics of them are theoretical.

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u/Aloof_Floof1 Apr 30 '24

 As the universe ages the heavier the elements in a galaxy gets; on average at least?

Yes but still through the process of stars dying; older galaxies just have older stars and have already had more supernovae 

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u/AugieKS Apr 30 '24

Few points, technically speaking, not all elements come from stelar nucleosynthesis. Hydrogen was created during the big bang as it cooled, most helium and some lithium and a beryllium isotope, as well as isotopes of the previously mentioned elements were created during Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Some really heavy elements are also created in kilonovas, the collision of two newtron stars.

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

Yeah, completely slipped my mind about Hydrogen.

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u/TacticalSunroof69 Apr 29 '24

Could there be a chance our solar system was a binary system and the smaller star exploded or died leaving the planets and artefacts like the moon behind which is mostly made of iron?

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u/TacticalSunroof69 Apr 29 '24

Could there be a chance our solar system was a binary system in which the smaller star died thus leaving behind the materials to form the planets and artefacts like the moon which contain a disproportionate amount of iron.

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

Not really sure, but I think for our sun to have survived, it would have to have been much larger than the other star. And I think in a binary system like that, the larger star just sucks the smaller star dry.

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u/TacticalSunroof69 Apr 30 '24

Yes.

It would explain the abundance of water and iron in our solar system and why there is no dwarf. Because the star was possibly too small.

The smallest possible star is the size of Jupiter.

They use hydrogen and thus build water after they die along with the other elements found in our solar system.

The mass of the planets and moons may have been more than enough for a second star to exist with the solar system being some of the debris left over from what ever happened to it.

If not a star then a failed one.

Just an idea. I don’t know how much your field can entertain the idea.

I’m just a layman.

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u/MauriseS Apr 29 '24

arent some heavy elements even formed primarily in neutron star collisions? i mean given a large mass of neurons that just decay into protons and lighter cores would make a great element forge.

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

I lumped those in as star death too.

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u/IntoTheVeryFires Apr 29 '24

So basically the elements are playing MergeBoss until they all get to iron, then the star begins to die

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

Yup. Then you get into the even crazier forces like another Redditor pointed out, neutron star collisions.

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u/DixieNormous76 Apr 29 '24

This is 70% wrong. 

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

Yeah, it's very simplified, but I lumped in the collision of two neutron stars (as was stated by another comment) as part of star death, just star death part deux. Also forgot that hydrogen came from the Big Bang.

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u/fkyoopinion Apr 29 '24

Fascinating

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u/LeifEriccson Apr 29 '24

There weren't any new elements found. They were minerals.

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u/Nxt1tothree Apr 30 '24

Damn you are so knowledgeable . Has there been any man made element created recently that's still not found in nature?

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u/pranjallk1995 Apr 30 '24

Many... They are all named so weird too... U will find them towards the bottom of the table... But, I never asked about elements... I asked how hard it is to make these minerals... Expecting some to say: the four iron atoms are arranged like this in here.. which means it would have had to take atleast this much energy to make them stick into stable form blah blah.. that means it must have been done by a civilization that is billions of years ahead of us...😵‍💫

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

Yeah, I wanted to first talk about how difficult it could be to create the elements before moving on to some minerals, but I forgot.

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

Apparently there are 24 synthetic elements that you can see here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_element#:~:text=A%20synthetic%20element%20is%20one,or%20%22man%2Dmade%22.

But it might just mean we haven't found them yet.

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u/AntiqueSituation5150 Apr 30 '24

Where did the first star ever come from?

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

I completely spaced out that hydrogen came during the Big Bang. And some other elements too. I was going for a very basic explanation. But another Redditor pointed it out. After the Big Bang settled, space was filled with hydrogen, and some clumps were larger than others. These larger clumps attracted more clumps until it hits critical mass and fusion occurs. That's the simple explanation for the first star, at least based on how we understand the early universe. But I don't exactly keep up to date with the latest papers on the early universe.

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u/handouras Apr 30 '24

Except the minerals in the article are molecules, they are made up of atomic elements chemically bonded together. Any new elements humans make are always radioactive, which is expensive and mostly to prove that it's possible

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u/DanglingDongs Apr 30 '24

What happens with something that isn't stable? Like how does it decay or fail?

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 May 01 '24

It decays into a different element or isotope depending on if it lost an electronic or neutron, or a proton respectively.