A lightning strike on a tree in Florida has produced a phosphorus-based material never seen before on Earth: it could be a new type of mineral, halfway between terrestrial and space minerals found in meteorites. The discovery is published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment by Matthew Pasek and Tian Feng of the University of Southern Florida together with Luca Bindi, full professor of Mineralogy and Crystallography at the University of Florence, researcher associated with the Institute of Geosciences and Georesources of the Cnr and member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
Bindi and Pasek had already collaborated together by publishing last December in PNAS the discovery of another extraordinary hitherto unknown material, a quasicrystal produced by a lightning strike on a power line in Nebraska.
The new material discovered in Florida was instead generated by a bolt of lightning that fell on a tree in the city of New Port Richey during a summer storm in 2012. The electric discharge released in the sandy soil generated a fulgurite (a glassy mass also called ‘fossilized lightning ‘) that the owners of the land put up for sale, attracting the attention of Pasek who bought the find to analyze it together with Bindi.
“We’ve never seen this naturally occurring material on Earth,” explains Pasek. “Similar minerals can be found in meteorites and in space, but we’ve never seen this exact material anywhere.”
According to the reconstruction of the researchers, the lightning would have burned the carbon in the tree as well as the iron that had accumulated around its roots, generating this material similar to calcium phosphite. Attempts to recreate it in the laboratory have failed, suggesting that very special conditions and timing are needed to create it.
Source: Ansa
I am a journalist with over 6 years of experience working in the news industry. I currently work as an author for Global Happenings, and my coverage focuses on Technology news. I have written for various publications, including Reuters, The New York Times and The Guardian.
