Edscottite

Iron carbide mineral

Edscottite is an iron carbide mineral, with the formula Fe₅C₂. It was previously known to occur during iron smelting, but in 2019 was identified as occurring in nature, but not naturally occurring on earth, when it was discovered in a meteorite.^[1]

The source, the Wedderburn meteorite, was found in 1951 just outside Wedderburn in Australia, and is held in the Museums Victoria collection.^[2]

During a re-investigation of a section of the meteorite housed at the University of California, Los Angeles, Chi Ma and Alan Rubin verified the presence of a new mineral.^[3] They named it edscottite in honor of Edward (Ed) R. D. Scott of the University of Hawaii, USA, a pioneering cosmochemist.^[4]

References

^ Mannix, Liam (2019-08-31). "This meteorite came from the core of another planet. Inside it, a new mineral". The Age. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
^ "Wedderburn meteorite". Museums Victoria Collections. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
^ Ma, Chi; Rubin, Alan E. (2019). "Edscottite, Fe5C2, a new iron carbide mineral from the Ni-rich Wedderburn IAB iron meteorite". American Mineralogist. 104 (9): 1351–1355. doi:10.2138/am-2019-7102. ISSN 1945-3027.
^ "Edscottite | New Carbon Mineral". mineralchallenge.net. Retrieved 2019-09-01.