It’s not so common for us to think about pure metals as minerals, or even crystals, but just like pinocchio could be a real boy, pure metals can be minerals too. This is because, if the metal cools down from a melt very slowly, layers of metal atoms can add onto previously solidified atoms, forming a defined lattice of atoms, and ta-dahh, it’s a single crystal! This is different from m ...[Read More]
One of the saddest things for mineralogists is to see beautiful minerals crushed to extract their valuable contents, but often, without mining, we don’t get to see these minerals in the first place. Mineral hunters often scrounge around in the big piles of waste rock from mines, because the machines used for smashing up rock do a much better job of exposing minerals than a geological hammer ...[Read More]
Volcanic lightning is a common phenomenon related to explosive volcanism, often rattling down in a spectacle of hundreds of lightning strikes within a single eruptive event. Apart from its spectacular appearance, lightning can also be used as helpful tool to detect and monitor volcanic activity in remote locations on Earth and potentially on other planets, and is even questioned to have influenced ...[Read More]
#MINERALMONDAY: your weekly dose of minerals every* Monday (* excluding the last few months of Mondays…). A lot of bad things have happened since the start of the year, but perhaps the least important of these is the complete lack of minerals every Monday. Don’t worry, we are back, and what better way to start than with baksanite, Bi6Te2S3. Why baksanite? Well, for the sake of sounding ...[Read More]