Scientists are amazed by the mysterious material that fell to Earth, revealing the secret of how heat moves in the universe.

DNVN - This material is neither completely crystalline nor completely glass, but exists in a hybrid form, conducting heat in an unprecedented way: Maintaining the same state as the temperature increases or decreases.

The Importance of Thermal Conduction in Modern Technology

In materials science , crystals and glasses, which process heat in opposite ways, are the basis for many contemporary technologies. From miniaturizing electronics, to increasing the efficiency of waste heat recovery into energy, to extending the life of aerospace heat shields, all depend on understanding how atomic arrangement affects heat transfer.

According to Michele Simoncelli – assistant professor at Columbia University Engineering – the research team approached the problem from quantum mechanics and applied artificial intelligence to accurately solve the underlying equations.

Discoveries from meteorites and Mars

In a paper published on July 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Simoncelli and his colleagues Nicola Marzari (EPFL Lausanne) and Francesco Mauri (Sapienza University of Rome) predicted the existence of a hybrid material between a crystal and a glass. This prediction was later confirmed by a team from Sorbonne University in France.

Increased disorder in a material’s atomic structure affects its macroscopic thermal conductivity—a property important for thermal management technologies. The materials studied include crystalline meteorite tridymite (left), a tridymite phase with crystalline bond order and amorphous bond geometry (center), and a completely amorphous silica glass (right). Red represents oxygen (O), blue represents silicon (Si), and the common SiO4 tetrahedral arrangements are highlighted in blue. Credit: Simoncelli Lab.

What’s special is that this unique material has been found in meteorites and even on Mars. Its unusual heat transfer mechanism promises to open up new directions for designing materials that can withstand extreme temperature differences and provide important clues about the thermal history of planets.

Meteorite silica and the rare thermal constant

Based on predictions from 2019, the team determined that a special form of silicon dioxide called “tridymite”—first described in the 1960s—was the hybrid material. The sample was mined from a meteorite that fell in Steinbach, Germany, in 1724 and was studied with permission from the Paris Museum of Natural History.

The results showed that meteorite tridymite possesses an atomic structure that lies between an ordered crystal and an amorphous glass. Remarkably, its thermal conductivity remains constant between 80 K and 380 K – a rarity in the world of materials.

Potential applications in steel industry

Beyond its scientific value, the discovery also opens up practical prospects. The team predicts that tridymite could form during decades of thermal aging in refractory bricks in steelmaking furnaces. Given that 1 kg of steel produced emits 1.3 kg of CO₂, with nearly 1 billion tons of steel each year accounting for about 7% of carbon emissions in the United States, this new material could contribute to better heat control, thereby reducing emissions in the steel industry.

AI, quantum mechanics and the future of heat control

Simoncelli said his team used machine learning to overcome the computational limitations of traditional methods, simulating heat transfer with quantum precision. These mechanisms not only shed light on the mystery of heat transfer in hybrid materials, but also pave the way for new technologies such as wearable thermoelectric devices, neuromorphic computing, and spintronics.

“This is just the beginning. This material not only challenges current theory but also opens up the future of thermal control for many industries,” Simoncelli emphasized.

La Khe (According to SciTechDaily)

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