Moissanite Loose Stones
and Fine Moissanite Jewelry

Moissanite Stardust

Moissanite is what scientists call a "presolar grain." Presolar grains are tiny dust particles that are literally bits of stars we can now study in the laboratory.They condensed from the gas phase in the cooling outflows of stars (such as red giants and supernova explosions) billions of years ago, before the formation of our solar system. These dust grains became swept up in the interstellar medium and eventually made their way into the cloud of gas and dust ("molecular cloud") from which the Sun, Earth and planets formed 4.6 billion years ago. Most of the pre-existing dust in the Sun's parent molecular cloud (at least the dust that was in what became the inner solar system where the Earth now sits) was vaporized as the forming solar system heated up. However, a small fraction of the dust survived solar system formation, protected inside asteroids. Occasionally, pieces of these asteroids fall to the Earth and are called "primitive meteorites." By breaking up the meteorites and dissolving them away in strong acids, we have been able to isolate some of the presolar stardust. The entire process is illustrated below:

Because the atoms in the grains are the original atoms from the parent stars, by studying this dust we can probe processes that occur inside stars and in the interstellar medium. Thus, the discovery of presolar grains has essentially opened up a new branch of astronomy, where laboratory microanalytical instrumentation takes the place of telescopes. In 1893, Nobel-Prize winning scientist Henri Moissan began studying fragments of a meteorite in Diablo Canyon, near meteor crater in Arizona. In these fragments Dr. Moissan discovered tiny quantities of a shimmering mineral, with fire and brilliance never before seen on earth. After extensive research, Dr. Moissan concluded that this mineral was made of silicon carbide (moissanite), a presolar grain.

Presolar silicon carbide (moissanite)is probably the best-studied of any of the known presolar grain types (diamond being another presolar grain). Silicon carbide grains range in size from about 0.1 micron up to as large as 20 microns ( 1 micron= 1 millionth of a meter). Most presolar silicon carbide is believed to have formed in "AGB" stars, a certain type of very old red giant star that is rich in carbon, but some of the grains have isotopic signatures indicating other stellar sources, including supernovae and novae.