One of the rarest meteorites ever seen has been discovered in Italy. In fact, it is the third to contain an extremely rare alloy of aluminum and copper and the second with a quasicrystal of natural origin, that is, a material considered 'impossible' because, unlike normal crystals, its structure follows patterns that never repeat.

Described in the journal Communications Earth & Environment by Italian research led by Giovanna Agrosì, a professor of Mineralogy at the University of Bari, the meteorite is a tiny sphere and was discovered in Calabria, Italy, on Mount Gariglione. It was found by a collector, attracted by the unusual metallic luster, who then sent it to the University of Bari.

There, analysis confirmed the extraterrestrial origin of the sphere, which is currently housed in the University of Bari's Museum of Earth Sciences.

Working with Agrosi on the study were researchers from the University of Bari's Department of Earth and Geoenvironmental Sciences (Daniela Mele, Gioacchino Tempesta and Floriana Rizzo), the University of Florence's Department of Earth Sciences (Luca Bindi and Tiziano Catelani) and the Italian Space Agency, with Paola Manzari. Bindi, in particular, discovered a quasicrystal in one of the meteorites preserved in the University of Florence's Museum of Natural History, and his research confirmed that quasicrystals, whose discovery was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011, are a new type of matter in their own right.