Usually our blog posts are about fancy minerals and cool science, but today we want to use this platform to introduce you to our new GMPV ECS team for the term 2020/2021! First of all, what exactly are we doing here in the GMPV ECS team and why are we even existing?! – Well, the GMPV ECS team is a group of young researchers (themselves being ECS), who want to support young scientists at the beginn ...[Read More]
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]