Naturally Occurring Quasicrystals

I love quasicrystals—like crystals, but with patterns that never repeat, like Penrose tiles. But they’ve very rare in nature. They’re created only in the most exotic and violent events: a high-speed collision of asteroids, lightning hitting a downed power cable in a sand dune—or an atomic bomb! Amazingly, the first 3 kinds of naturally occurring quasicrystal were discovered in a single meteorite that landed in Khatyrka, in the far east of Russia. They’ve never been found anywhere else! And this meteorite is highly anomalous: it’s the only meteorite known that contains metallic aluminum—and it seems to have been formed in a ultra-high-velocity collision between asteroids. The only other quasicrystal I know that may be naturally created came from a bolt of lightning hitting a sand dune near a downed power cable in Nebraska. Then there was one found amid the fused desert sand and copper transmission cable left behind by the first atomic bomb test at Trinity, New Mexico. That’s not quite…