Specialists from Chelyabinsk State University recently concluded that the carbon crystal discovered in 2013 after a meteorite fell is not a diamond, as previously thought.
In the course of a study carried out in Moscow, it turned out that in the crystal structure of the fragment there are no chemical bonds that correspond to diamond. However, scientists are not going to stop there and intend to conduct new research on special equipment in Germany.
It should be noted that the research is complicated by the fact that the crystal found in the meteorite is very small in size - its thickness is comparable to that of a human hair.
As Sergey Taskaev, dean of the Physics Faculty of Chelyabinsk State University, said, in order to study the crystal structure of such a small object, one needs very delicate equipment, very expensive. However, the most important thing is that we need intelligent specialists who can not only obtain information about the structure of an object, but also not spoil the sample, which can simply melt in X-rays from overheating.
Taskaev noted that it will take researchers a month to figure out which crystal is in the dust fragments of the Chelyabinsk meteorite.
Let us recall that the Chelyabinsk meteorite entered the Earth's atmosphere on February 15, 2013, causing a strong explosion in the atmosphere at an altitude of 30-50 km.