Toward A New Scientific Discovery of the Unique Gold and Diamond-Bearing Agit Khangay and Khuree Mandal Astropipes of Mongolia

This paper presents summation of twenty-one years investigation of the unique gold and diamondbearing Agit Khangay and Khuree Mandal astropipes of Mongolia. These astropipe geostructures are as selective examples amongst for four impact meteorite craters of Mongolia (Figure 1): Agit Khangay (10 km in diameter, 470 38' N; 960 05' E), Khuree Mandal (D=11 km; 460 28' N; 980 25' E), Bayan Khuree (D=1 km; 440 06' N; 1090 36' E), and Tsenkher (D=7 km; 980 21' N; 430 36' E). The term “astropipes” [1] is a neologism and new scientific discovery in Earth science and these geostructures are outlandish in certain aspects. Particularly the Agit Khangay and Khuree Mandal astropipes are genuine “meteorite crater” geostructures but they also contain kimberlite diamonds and gold. Suevite-like (agizite) rocks from the astropipes contain such minerals, as coesite, stishovite, moissanite (0.6 mm), kamacite, tektite, khamravaevite (mineral of meteorite-titanic carbon), graphite-2H, chondrite, picroilmenite, pyrope, phlogopite, khangaites (tektites, 1.0-3.0 mm in size), olivine, etc [2]-[3]. Most panned samples and hand specimens contain fine diamonds with octahedral habit (0.2-0.5 mm, 6.4 mg or 0.034-0.1 carat) and gold (from 0.13 to 6.33-32.0 g/t). Of special interest is the larger number of the black magnetic balls (0.05-5.0 mm) are characterized by high content of Ti, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Mn, Mg, Cd, Ga, Cl, Al, Si, K. These described meteorite craters possess reliable topographic, geological, mineralogical, geochemical, and aerospace mapping data, also some geophysical and petrological features (especially shock metamorphism) have been found, all of which indicate that these geostructures are a proven new type of gold and diamond-bearing impact geostructure, termed here “astropipes”. The essence of the phenomenon is mantle-crust mix and fluidization of the combined nucleosynthesis-magmatic evolution-palingenesis interaction.