Zig-Zag Metal Crystals Made in Space

Having slowly cooled over a billion years from the molten core of a planet that blasted apart in a cataclysmic collision in our solar system’s formation.

Peter Thoeny shot it during his last visit to our Space Museum, and upscaled from 24 to 90MP with the Topaz Gigapixel AI, , a model trained with millions of photos. The detail is amazing… but it comes filtered from the mind of an alien AI. 👽 Here is the full 90 megapixel upload.

Most of the Seymchan Meterorite is at the Russian Academy of Sciences (which I recently visited and found captivating). I also voyaged through Eastern Russia near Magadan years ago.

This huge slice of a Seymchan meteorite shows the internal structure which appears as an intricate latticework — actually the crystalline pattern of the alloys that comprise the meteorite — known as the Widmanstätten pattern. This unique “fingerprint” serves as a diagnostic in the identification of iron meteorites as different meteorites feature distinct patterns.

This Pallasite-PMG comes from the Magadan District, Russia and was found in 1967. This meteorite now classified as a rare ungrouped Pallasite. The new pieces are a mixture of some pieces being iron only, some with a few silicates.

37.47 x 26.04 x .79 cm (14.75 x 10.25 x .3125 inches) and 3964.9 grams (8.74 pounds).