The fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite was accompanied by its significant destruction, from which a large number of fragments fell on the Earth’s surface. Its disintegration was also accompanied by the formation of a cloud of gas and dust, followed by precipitation of the dust component.
Gutfleisch and colleagues studied the crystals using a scanning electron microscope and discovered that they have a variety of unusual shapes: closed, hemispherical shells and hexagonal rods.
Further analysis using Raman spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography showed that the carbon crystals were actually exotic forms of graphite. Most likely, these structures were formed by successively adding layers of graphene to closed carbon cores. The researchers studied this process using molecular dynamics simulations of the growth of such structures.
Source: Ferra
