Western researcher confirms hottest rock on record

Sample of black glass that recorded 2,370 C (Source: Gavin Tolometti) - A sample of black glass that recorded at 2,370 C temperature (Source: Gavin Tolometti) - If there was ever any doubt the 2011 discovery by a post-doctoral candidate was indeed the hottest rock on Earth, new findings from a Western-led research team are putting that uncertainty to rest. Eleven years after researchers from Western unearthed what was then perceived as the hottest rock on Earth, a recent study found four additional zircon grains - a hard mineral commonly known as a substitute for diamonds - that confirmed the previous rock's record-high temperature of 2,370 C. The study, published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters , was led by Earth sciences post-doctoral candidate Gavin Tolometti and co-authors: Timmons Erickson from NASA Johnson Space Center, Gordon Osinski and Catherine Neish from the department of Earth sciences; and Cayron Cyril from the Laboratory of Thermomechanical Metallurgy. In 2011, then PhD candidate Michael Zanetti was working with Osinski at the Mistastin Lake impact crater in Labrador when he found a glass rock that contained small zircon grains frozen inside it. That rock was later analyzed and found to have been formed at 2,370 C temperature as a result of an asteroid impact. These findings were shared in a study published in 2017. In their own study using samples collected between 2009 and 2011, Tolometti and his colleagues were able to find four additional zircon grains that confirmed the 2011 discovery to be true.