\n
\n
![\"EarthSnap\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/earthsnap-banner-news.webp.webp\")
\n<\/a><\/p>\n
A silica grain preserved inside the Steinbach meteorite, an iron-rich space rock that fell in Germany in 1724, exhibits the unusual behavior.<\/p>\n
Examining that fragment, Dr. Michele Simoncelli at Columbia University<\/a> documented heat flow that barely changed across large temperature swings.<\/p>\n Measurements from the mineral showed that its heat conductivity stayed almost constant from deep cold to well above room temperature<\/a>.<\/p>\n Such steadiness is rare among solids and signals that the familiar categories used to classify them may be incomplete.<\/p>\n Heat usually stays steady<\/p>\n Heat usually spreads faster or slower as a solid warms, and that change helps engineers predict performance.<\/p>\n Engineers call that thermal conductivity \u2013 how easily a solid lets heat pass. In terms of this characteristic, crystals and glass swing opposite ways.<\/p>\n Across about -316 to 224 degrees Fahrenheit (-193 to 107 degrees Celsius) the meteorite sample kept its heat flow almost flat.<\/p>\n A flat curve showed one solid could dodge the usual tradeoff between rigid atomic order and loose atomic disorder.<\/p>\n A strange silica in the meteorite<\/p>\n Mineralogists call the meteorite phase tridymite, a form of silica that is made from linked silicon and oxygen atoms.<\/p>\n Instead of lining up like a tidy crystal, its atomic network kept a repeating pattern but held distorted angles.<\/p>\n Repeated rings of atoms provided order, yet small twists and bends made each ring slightly different from its neighbors.<\/p>\n That mixture set up two competing ways to carry heat, and the measurements showed how they balanced.<\/p>\n Two pathways compete within silica<\/p>\n In a clean crystal, heat traveled through coordinated vibrations, and higher temperatures usually scattered those vibrations and reduced flow.<\/p>\n Inside glass, disorder blocked long-range travel, so heat jumped between local vibrations and rose as more motion filled in.<\/p>\n For the meteorite form of silica, one pathway weakened with warming while the other strengthened, leaving the total almost unchanged.<\/p>\n That cancellation held from deep cold to above room temperature, which made the material valuable for places with wild heating cycles.<\/p>\n A prediction tested<\/p>\n Back in 2019, Simoncelli built a single equation that treated crystals and glasses with the same math.<\/p>\n From that framework, the model predicted a middle class of solids where crystal-like and glass-like heat transport could cancel.<\/p>\n Meteorite tridymite became the cleanest test, since nature had already made the odd structure that the equation required.<\/p>\n By matching prediction to measurement, the work turned an abstract idea into a guide that engineers can actually use.<\/p>\n Born under extremes<\/p>\n Violent heating and fast cooling can freeze atoms into patterns that never form in a quiet lab melt.<\/p>\n Alongside the meteorite sample, the team studied a tridymite phase inside the refractory, heat-resistant lining used in industrial furnaces.<\/p>\n In steel plants, those bricks faced long burns and sudden cool-downs, so steady heat flow could cut wasted fuel.<\/p>\n Finding the same behavior in space rock and factory bricks hinted that the key lay in structure<\/a>, not origin.<\/p>\n Mars adds context<\/p>\n On Mars, Curiosity found tridymite in Gale crater<\/a>, a large impact basin near the planet\u2019s equator. Because tridymite normally forms at very high heat, its presence pushed researchers to rethink Mars as mostly made of basalt, a common, dark volcanic rock.<\/p>\n Simoncelli\u2019s team argued that these hybrid heat traits could also influence how planets cool, not just how they erupt.<\/p>\n If geologists can spot more of these phases, cooling models may need new assumptions about how heat escapes rocky worlds.<\/p>\n Furnaces need control<\/p>\n In 2023, the steel<\/a> industry averaged 1.92 tons of CO2 per ton of crude steel cast globally. Inside a furnace, refractory bricks controlled how heat reached the steel, so their conductivity helped set fuel demand.<\/p>\n \u201cOur findings shed light on how to increase the conductivity of refractories, reducing furnaces\u2019 burn time and consequently lowering carbon emissions,\u201d wrote Dr. Simoncelli.<\/p>\n Making that sort of brick on purpose would demand tight control over structure, and it may not survive every furnace<\/a> chemistry.<\/p>\n Designing the middle<\/p>\n Materials designers rarely get a tool that keeps heat flow steady, since most solids speed up or slow down.<\/p>\n By tweaking atomic order without turning the structure into full glass, researchers can aim for a custom balance.<\/p>\n Large-scale production still needs recipes that repeat the same internal structure, and industry will test whether it stays stable for years.<\/p>\n Even if the category stays fuzzy, the finding offers a practical target: to keep heat predictable when temperatures swing hard.<\/p>\n Silica in a new heat class<\/p>\n From a centuries-old meteorite to modern furnace bricks, the same hybrid structure kept heat<\/a> behavior steady across conditions.<\/p>\n Future work will need lab-made samples and real furnace trials before anyone can rely on this middle ground.<\/p>\n The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>. Like what you read?\u00a0Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a>\u00a0for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on\u00a0EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by\u00a0Eric Ralls<\/a>\u00a0and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fragment of a centuries-old meteorite has revealed a form of solid silica that carries heat at nearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-521367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u2014\u2013<\/p>\n