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What can minerals tell us about Earth’s past? This geologist is finding out
· Confirmed
In Short: These zircons appear to have been derived from sedimentary rocks, and their oxygen isotopic ratios point to the presence of liquid water weathering rocks on Earth's surface since at least 4.3 billion years ago.
A team of researchers, led by Robert Hazen and his colleagues, has been making detailed predictions about the types of minerals that are missing and where they might be found, as detailed in a series of papers published over the last couple of years.
On June 7, 2016, during a data visualization workshop at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, Hazen and his team began applying these methods to minerals.
The team estimates that more than 5,200 minerals have been named and described, with at least 1,500 remaining undiscovered.
Since 2001, the Hudson Institute of Mineralogy has been gathering data on where people find particular minerals.
The types of rare copper-containing minerals that formed in the last 70 million years are strikingly different from those that formed in the early days of our planet, before life filled the atmosphere with oxygen.
Of the 66 named cobalt-containing minerals, 22 have been found only in one or two locations.
Tiny grains of zircon, about 4.24 billion years old and barely the width of a human hair, have been found trapped in a granite rock in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
The dating of lunar samples collected during the Apollo missions indicates that many impacts occurred around 3.9 billion years ago, which was relatively early in the evolution of our 4.6 billion year old solar system.
Scientists have long known that oxygen became a permanent part of Earth's atmosphere about 2.3 billion years ago during the Great Oxidation Event.
Researchers are also studying the rocks and cliffs of Scotland’s Stoer formation, which offer a combination of environments comparable to ancient Martian lakes and rivers, and hold evidence of microbial life from 1.2 billion years ago.
The study, published in Nature Communications, was led by researchers including UC Riverside geologist Andrey Bekker.
Minerals owe their origins to an array of different processes, totaling 57 in total, according to Hazen and his colleague Shaunna Morrison.
What's confirmed
- In a series of papers published in the last couple of years, the team has made detailed predictions about the types of minerals that are missing and where they might be found.
- More than 5,200 minerals have been named and described, and Hazen and his colleagues estimate that at least 1,500 remain undiscovered.
- The dating of lunar samples collected during the Apollo missions tells us that many of these impacts formed around 3.9 billion years ago, which was relatively early in the evolution of our 4.6 billion year old solar system.
- This intense period of meteorite impact events, often referred to as the Late Heavy Bombardment hypothesis, has attracted much interest over the past 40 years.
What's still developing
- Many of the Jack Hills zircons appear to have been derived from sedimentary rocks, and their oxygen isotopic ratios point to the presence of liquid water weathering rocks on Earth's surface since at least 4.3 billion years ago, Bell revealed.
- Farfan is now living her teenage dream as the curator of gems and minerals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
- Learning how signs of ancient life show up in Earth rocks like these Scottish cliffs can help us understand the story of habitability and the potential for biosignatures to be preserved and detected on Mars.
- Oakland found that uses outside renewable power and electric vehicles accounted for 83% of nickel demand, 79% of magnet rare-earth demand, 71% of copper demand, and 68% of both cobalt and graphite demand in 2024.
- It includes minerals for weapons, data centers, construction and conventional industry, as well as the cost of expanding the global fleet of battery-electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel-cell cars and vans from 11 million in 2020 to almost 2 billion in 2050 Smaller batteries, fewer cars and higher recycling rates would reduce the amount of new ore required.
- President Donald Trump stated publicly on Wednesday that the United States is about to advance "large-scale" oil, natural gas and mineral resource exploration operations in Greenland.
- In addition to crude oil and natural gas, the region is also rich in critical minerals such as rare earths, lithium, nickel and graphite —raw materials indispensable for the defense, semiconductor and new energy industrial chains.
- Click to tell Google to prioritize Quanta and see more of the best coverage of science and math in your search and AI results.
- Scientists know that these fungi form partnerships with 80% of all plant species on Earth, a relationship that evolved some 450 million years ago.
- CHINESE President Xi Jinping heads into this week’s summit with U.S. President Donald Trump having “outmaneuvered the Trump administration so far,” according to China expert Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), as the two leaders seek to preserve a fragile commercial truce over tariffs and rare earths.
- Kennedy said a key test of the summit will be whether Trump and Xi extend the rare-earths and tariff truce and begin a substantive dialogue on artificial intelligence.
- Farfan unlocks those tales using X-ray and Raman spectroscopies, bouncing beams off samples to see what they can tell us.