Neumann lines

Neumann lines are parallel multitudes of very fine, partially intersecting lines in iron meteorites. They are visible when a certain type of iron meteorites, namely Hexaedrite, which consist only of kamacite, anschleift, polishes and etches with methanolhaltiger nitric acid. These lines are not to be confused with the Widmanstatten structure which is coarser and does not occur in Hexaedriten.

It is assumed that the cause is a shock process for this structure, such as meteorite impacts on asteroids.

Neumann lines also occur, for example, in the lattice structure by detonation of the shaped metal. Here they serve, inter alia, the detection of a -busting technical exposure to the components. They are caused by compression of the micro-structural metal lattice.

If you imagine a series of equally sized marbles or balls instead of metal atoms before, so are the neighboring " marbles " in parallel so that each marble only one touched a marble of the neighboring row. Through the application of significant pressure the marble series will now be shifted so that each marble touches two marbles of the neighboring row. It has been pressed into the intermediate spaces.

Neumann lines are named after Johann G. Neumann, who discovered them in 1848 in the Hexaedriten Braunau, the 1847 was dropped.