Meteorites, Altai Mountains, China
Aletai meteorite cube
Aletai Iron
Regular geometry wrought from matter four and a half billion years old.
450 000 ₽ · In stock — Gimenei shopping centre
- Epoch
- Before life began
- Age
- ≈ 4.5 billion years
- Origin
- Altai Mountains, China
- Weight
- 1 267 g
- Classification
- Iron meteorite (Aletai, octahedrite — with a pattern of intersecting bands)
- Ref.
- R–0277
The cube cuts one and the same metal in three planes at once, and on each face the pattern runs at its own angle. This lattice formed in the core of a protoplanet and cannot be reproduced on Earth.
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
While Aletai lay in the foothills of the Altai it was a shapeless mass of iron beneath a dark crust. Its regular geometry and the pattern on its faces were given to it by the cut.