Sam Crossley

@space-rocks.bsky.social

288 Followers 82 Following

Planetary Geoscientist at the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory and Astromaterials PI of the Nonlinear Optical Mineralogy (NOM) group at the University of Arizona. Also interested in experimental petrology/geochemistry and remote sensing. www.samcrossley.space

Mm, you can practically smell the sulfur.

Second harmonic generations (SHG) stimulated by synthetic SiC are approximately one million times stronger than signals from other meteoritic minerals. The large features are clusters of SiC nanoparticles, and blue/cyan dots are strongly fluorescent individual nanoparticles of SiC and Si3N4. From Alevy et al. (2025) (LPSC abstract 1218).

False-color multiphoton image of the mineral chlorapatite in a primitive meteorite. The field of view is about 0.6 mm. Check out the linked paper to learn more! It's open-access.