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Hypatia stone: Ancient alien rock stuns science

2,497 views · Published 13 January 2018 · 2:00 · Indexed 6 November 2026

Channel: Civil Disturbia · 2018 · Science & Technology

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The Hypatia stone – pebbles found in Egypt, which once came from a huge rock that was several metres wide – have long been known to have come to Earth from somewhere else. But new research shows they are even more alien than we thought, having been formed outside of our solar system and even before our sun existed.

That's the conclusion of new research that looked at how the strange rocks were formed, by exploring what minerals can be found inside them.

In 2013, the rocks were found not to have come from Earth, and two years later scientists confirmed that they had not come down to Earth as part of any known meteor or comet. The new work aimed to look at the minerals found inside and find how they were made up.

"When Hypatia was first found to be extraterrestrial, it was a sensation, but these latest results are opening up even bigger questions about its origins," said Dr Marco Andreoli, a research fellow at the School of Geosciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, and a researcher on the study.

Jan Kramers, the professor who undertook the new study, said that the internal structure of the rock was something like a fruitcake that had fallen and broken across. By looking at the various bits of fruits that are found inside, they can try and understand how the rock was formed and where ti came from.

"We can think of the badly mixed dough of a fruit cake representing the bulk of the Hypatia pebble, what we called two mixed 'matrices' in geology terms," said Professor Kramers. "The glace cherries and nuts in the cake represent the mineral grains found in Hypatia 'inclusions'. And the flour dusting the cracks of the fallen cake represent the 'secondary materials' we found in the fractures in Hypatia, which are from Earth," he says.

The mixture of that dough looks like nothing ever before seen on Earth. Usually, scientists would expect to see a little bit of carbon and lots of silicon – but the rock is made up the complete opposite way around.

SOURCE: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/science/alien-rock-extraterrestrial-egypt-hypatia-news-latest-update-solar-system-research-scientist-a8154241.html%3famp

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