Out-of-This-World Diamond-Studded Rock Just Got Even Weirder

[Judi Lynn]

By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | January 11, 2018 06:54pm ET

A tiny chunk of stone that looks like nothing else ever seen in the solar system might be even weirder than scientists thought.

The Hypatia stone was found in southwestern Egypt in 1996. It was hardly more than a pebble, just 1.3 inches (3.5 centimeters) wide at its widest and a smidge over an ounce (30 grams) in weight. But analysis revealed that the stone (dubbed "Hypatia" for a fourth-century female mathematician and philosopher) fit into no known category of meteorite. Now, a new study suggests that at least some parts of the stone may have formed before the solar system did.

If so — and that is a big "if" — the stone might reveal that the dust cloud that eventually congealed into our solar system was not as uniform as previously believed. [Big Bang to Civilization: 10 Amazing Origin Events]

Oddball discovery
When the Hypatia stone was first discovered, researchers weren't sure where it came from. Because it is studded with microdiamonds 50 nanometers to 2 micrometers in size, one possibility was that it was a strange example of a type of diamond known as a carbonado diamond. But studies in 2013 and 2015 definitively knocked out that possibility: The ratios of noble gases in the stone show that it is most certainly from out of this world. (The diamonds probably formed from the shock when the space rock blasted through Earth's atmosphere.)

More:
https://www.livescience.com/61409-extraterrestrial-hypatia-stone.html?utm_source=notification

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

1. Hypatia (360?-415) is an interesting person

She was a Neoplatonist philosopher and mathematician, with a reputation as a brilliant teacher. She got into trouble because the Christian Patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril, was having a political fight with the Roman Prefect, Orestes. Hypatia sided with Orestes, and a mob incited by a fanatical monk attacked her and literally tore her to pieces. Cyril almost certainly had some knowledge of what was going to take place, but did nothing.

Cyril was a man of violent passions and hatreds, and loathed Hypatia. Cyril has been declared a saint, and whenever I hear the phrase "the patience of a saint", I think of him.