Meteorites, Altai Mountains, China
Aletai meteorite slice
Aletai Iron
Nearly ten kg of iron, cooled over billions of years at a degree per million.
2 000 000 ₽ · In stock — Gimenei shopping centre
- Epoch
- Before life began
- Age
- ≈ 4.5 billion years
- Origin
- Altai Mountains, China
- Size
- 40 × 32 cm
- Weight
- 9 895 g
- Classification
- Iron meteorite (Aletai, octahedrite — with a pattern of intersecting bands)
- Ref.
- R–0276
The Widmanstätten pattern on the cut is made of crystals that grow only under cooling of a degree per million years. Only the core of a planetary body, sheltered by a rocky mantle, cools so slowly.
Aletai is an iron meteorite, one of the largest known on Earth. Its fragments were found in the Chinese part of the Altai Mountains, scattered over a territory more than four hundred kilometres in extent: this is the longest known meteorite strewn field. The total weight of the material collected exceeds seventy-four tonnes.
Polishing brings out the Widmanstätten pattern in the metal — a figure of nickel-iron crystals. It forms only under extremely slow cooling, a degree per million years, within a cosmic body. It cannot be reproduced on Earth.
As found
Aletai is found in the foothills of the Altai as heavy masses beneath a fusion crust, pitted with regmaglypts melted out on entry into the atmosphere. The Widmanstätten pattern within is invisible until the stone is sawn.