Professor Jan
Kramers and Dr Georgy Belyanin, from UJ's Paleoproterozoic
Mineralization (PPM) Research Centre, announced in 2013 that the
"Hypatia" pebble found in south-west Egypt was not from earth.
The stone was named after Hypatia of Alexandria, who was also one of the first women to study math, astronomy and philosophy.
The researchers
found exotic micro-mineral compounds in the stone that are not known to
occur on earth, or elsewhere in the solar system, meteorites or comets.
Two years later,
other research teams announced that the stone was not part of any known
types of meteorite or comet, based on noble gas and nuclear probe
analyses.
"What we do know is
that Hypatia was formed in a cold environment, probably at temperatures
below that of liquid nitrogen on earth (-196°C)," Kramers said.
Kramers, who was
recently recognised as a "leading international researcher" by the
National Research Foundation, said the research now needed to determine
what the stone's origins were and if the minerals could provide clues on
where it came from.
"In our solar
system it would have been way further out than the asteroid belt between
Mars and Jupiter, where most meteorites come from," he said.
"Comets come mainly
from the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbit of Neptune and about 40 times as
far away from the sun as we are," he said.
"Some come from the
Oort Cloud, even further out. We know very little about the chemical
compositions of space objects out there. So, our next question will dig
further into where Hypatia came from," Kramers said.