Meteorite Strike Creates New Type of Mineral

Ridgelift writes "Chinese researchers have discovered a new mineral created by a meteorite strike. A new form of chromite was discovered in the shock veins formed by the impact of the Suizhou meteorite. 'The shock of the impact created temperatures of about 2000C and pressures like those at 600 kilometres below the Earth.' Researcher Professor Hugh O'Neill says 'This potentially gives us clues to the orbital velocities of two bodies that come together to produce these shock collisions.' Along with the rare find, the researchers who discovered the new mineral get to name it."

Comments

Naming?

[ObviousGuy]

Shouldn't the naming of a chemical be up to a standards body to decide? Take the primary color Squant as an example of the wrongheadedness of letting something's discoverer name it.

Re:Not aware of a real mineral with that name, so.

[tiled_rainbows]

There's no existing mineral called Kryptonite, but there is an inert gas called Krypton. It's with those other ones like neon, argon, etc on the periodic table. So I always thought that "Kryptonite" ought to be a compound or weird allotrope of Krypton, like the Carbonite Han Solo is frozen in presumably has Carbon in it, or is an as-yet-undiscovered allotrope of Carbon particularly suitable for petrifying spacefaring bad-boys.

cool thing to do with meteorites:

[theMerovingian]

Make a knife!

For all you D&D/Conan nerds out there...

You can also buy your own meteorite here.