Quasicrystals : Third Natural Source | UPSC Daily Current Affairs 2023

👉Scientists have discovered a third natural source of quasicrystals.

👉Quasicrystal, also called quasi-periodic crystal, matter formed atomically in a manner somewhere between the amorphous solids of glasses and the precise pattern of crystals.

👉In quasicrystals, the atoms are arranged in a pattern that repeats itself at irregular, yet predictable, intervals.

👉The American-Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman discovered quasicrystals in the lab in 1982.

👉The first natural quasicrystal found was as microscopic grains in a fragment of the Khatyrka meteorite lying in the Koryak mountains of Russia.

👉The second time scientists found natural quasicrystals in the remains of the Trinity test of the Manhattan Project.

👉Recently in the Sand Hills dunes in northern Nebraska, where scientists found silicate glass which is a dodecagonal quasicrystal, rare even for quasicrystals

25/02/2023
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