Meteorites, Altai Mountains, China
Aletai meteorite sphere
Aletai Iron
Three kg of cosmic iron turned into a perfect sphere.
901 500 ₽ · In stock — Gimenei shopping centre
- Epoch
- Before life began
- Age
- ≈ 4.5 billion years
- Origin
- Altai Mountains, China
- Size
- 8 cm
- Weight
- 3 005 g
- Classification
- Iron meteorite (Aletai, octahedrite — with a pattern of intersecting bands)
- Ref.
- R–0278
The sphere has not a single flat face, and the Widmanstätten pattern closes around its entire circumference. The crystals it shows grew in the core of a protoplanet while that core was cooling.
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
The sphere was turned from a mass of Aletai iron. In its natural state the stone has not a single even surface — only a fusion crust and the hollows of regmaglypts.