Material Science

This is a macro photograph of an etched surface of the Mundrabilla meteorite, a small piece of the approximately 3.9 billion-year-old meteorite that was first discovered in Western Australia in 1911. Two more giant chunks, together weighing about 17 tons, were found in 1966. Researchers can learn much from this natural crystal growth experiment since it has spent several hundred million years cooling, and would be impossible to emulate in a lab. This single slice, taken from a 6 ton piece recovered in 1966, measures only 2 square inches. The macro photograph shows a metallic iron-nickel alloy phase of kamcite (38% Ni) and taenite (6% Ni) at bottom right, bottom left, and top left. The darker material is an iron sulfide (FeS or troilite) with a parallel precipitates of duabreelite (iron chromium sulfide (FeCr2S4).