Hypatia stone: The key which may unlock the mystery of solar system formation

Cairo, January 15: The creation of solar system is still now an unfolded mystery though scientists are coming up with new insights. Recently, scientists have found space rock in Egypt’s dessert which fell to Earth and could rewrite history. The stone named as Hypatia after the name of first Western woman mathematician and astronomer, contains minerals never seen before in our solar system.

New study founds Hypatia was formed in a cold environment, probably at temperatures below that of liquid nitrogen on Earth. Comets come from far far away from and scientists know very little about the chemical compositions of space objects out there. Hence they firstly want to find out from where Hypatia came.

The original rock which fell to the earth is assumed to be at least several meters in diameter but later it disintegrated into fragments. Among those fragments, Hypatia is one, which is itself embodiment of several small pieces.

The rock was originally found in 1996 by Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat Barakat. A group of researchers from the University of Johannesburg used advanced scanning techniques to probe the structure. Even in shape, the stones looked nothing like existing in knowledge of scientists.