John Carlos Baez on Nostr: I love quasicrystals - crystals with patterns that never repeat, like Penrose tiles. ...

I love quasicrystals - crystals with patterns that never repeat, like Penrose tiles. But they've very rare in nature. We've seen 3 kinds of quasicrystals in a single meteorite that landed in Khatyrka, Russia, and nowhere else. Very unusual: it's the the only meteorite known that contains metallic aluminum, and was formed in a ultra-high-velocity collision between asteroids.

The only other naturally created quasicrystal I know comes from a bolt of lightning hitting a sand dune in Nebraska.

Then there was one found amid the fused desert sand and copper transmission cable left behind by the first atomic bomb test at Trinity. That's not quite "naturally" created.

But that's it. As far as I can tell, the rest have been made in labs!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatyrka_meteorite