Quasicrystal Expedition (2011)
I joined an expedition to the Koryak Mountains in the Russian Far East during the summer of 2011 to recover natural quasicrystals. These crystals contain a quasi-periodic arrangements of atoms rather than a repeating unit cell and were first recognized in the 1980s. The first natural quasicrystal was discovered in the late 2000s as a museum specimen with a provenance in the Russian Far East. Our expedition was focused on finding more qusicrystals and characterizing their source. My role on the expedition was to help Chris Andronicos (Purdue Univeristy) map the bedrock surrounding the sample locality. Ultimately, the quasicrystals were determined to be from fragments of a meteorite preserved in the area's soil (MacPherson et al., 2013). Subsequent research of this meteorite has identified additional quasicrystals (Bindi et al., 2015), named two new minerals (Bindi et al., 2014; 2015), and suggested that the quasicrystals formed during impacts in space (Hollister et al., 2014).
Geologic map from MacPherson et al. (2013) of the quasicrystal sample locality (star) based on our own mapping and mapping by the Russian geologic survey.
Mud on the tracks of the "Snowcat" that we used to travel across the tundra to the sampling locality. Photo courtesy of Will Steinhardt.
Panorama of a river valley in the Koryak Mountains in Chukotka, Russia. Photo courtesy of Will Steinhardt.