Oliver Tschauner (Geoscience), was a coauthor on a paper titled,  "Shock synthesis of quasicrystals with implications for their origin in asteroid collisions," which was published in the advance online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Quasicrystals form only under very particular circumstances and for compositions of elements that usually do not occur together as elemental metals in nature. Nevertheless a natural quasicrystal has been found in a meteorite. The research team conducted shock-experiments on a sample that simulates that meteorite in composition and show that shock-induced chemical reactions at high pressure favour quasicrystal formation. Shock, induced by collisions of protoplanetary bodies in space, is probably the origin of natural quasicrystals.