Final 12 months, scientists introduced the invention of two new minerals: elaliite and elkinstantonite. These have been fascinating finds, maybe much more so as a result of they got here from a 15-ton meteorite that had hurtled by means of house to crash down in Somalia.
Whereas there are at present practically 6,000 mineral species acknowledged by the Worldwide Mineralogical Affiliation, Robert Hazen, a mineralogist on the Carnegie Establishment’s Geophysical Laboratory and George Mason College, says there are an estimated 9,000 to 10,000 minerals that exist proper right here on our personal planet.
“Most of these minerals are going to be extraordinarily uncommon, they’re going to be tiny,” he says. “But every of them tells us one thing in regards to the previous, about how planets work, about the place life got here from and who we’re.”
Seaborgite, for instance — a brand new mineral species introduced in 2021 that claimed the title of “mineral of the 12 months” — was present in Utah. It’s “clear with vitreous luster and really pale-yellow streak,” exhibiting “brilliant lime-green fluorescence” beneath a laser, in keeping with the researchers who first described it.
An Invaluable Commodity
As a result of they are often discovered throughout us, people have lengthy relied on minerals for a complete number of makes use of.
They at present make up important elements of the tech we rely on, for instance, together with the display you’re utilizing to learn this. Our personal our bodies want them to remain wholesome. We additionally covet treasured minerals merely for his or her magnificence or as objects of examine.
Cobalt and lithium are important components of rechargeable batteries, for instance. Phosphorus, derived from phosphate rock, is a fertilizer that fuels agriculture the world over, whereas copper finds its approach into any variety of electronics as a result of its conductivity. And in case you’re rummaging round in your pocket for cash, there’s an excellent probability you’ll pick one containing nickel.
Learn Extra: Need to Perceive How Lithium-Ion Batteries Work? Play a Recreation of ‘Jenga’
“I go searching my workplace and I see all of the various things — it is arduous to establish a single factor that is not derived, in a technique or one other, from minerals,” Hazen says. If minerals have been to go, he continues, “your world would simply vanish.”
Human Affect
As a lot as minerals have formed us as a species, nonetheless, people are additionally shaping minerals.
Hazen was a part of a workforce that recognized a bunch of minerals that happen “principally or solely as a consequence of human processes.” There are over 200 of those such mineral species to this point.
However our dependence on minerals comes with social and environmental prices. The mining of many of those minerals is wrapped up in points akin to baby labor, abuses of staff’ rights, and the degradation and lack of pure ecosystems. The cobalt that drives our tech is simply one instance.
New frontiers of mineral availability — such because the ocean ground — supply different alternatives, but in addition include nice, presumably unexpected dangers of their very own, say scientists. A spike in demand plus the crunch on availability of minerals important to the transition to “inexperienced” applied sciences akin to electrical automobiles, wind generators and photo voltaic panels however makes this prospect attractive for some.
Learn Extra: U.S. Wind Power Is (Lastly) Venturing Offshore
Pondering Twice
Amid hovering demand, there are warnings of lithium shortages, for instance. Merely put, there may be not an infinite variety of lithium-rich deposits preferrred for mining around the globe … however that doesn’t imply we’re going to expire, says Hazen.
“We will mine them out and run out of lithium in that sense, however each cubic foot of seawater has lithium in it,” he says. “It simply prices extra money and extra effort.” Estimates state that round 180 billion tons of lithium are discovered within the oceans.
Generally, nonetheless, Hazen is of the view that the impulse to seize minerals wherever they exist needs to be approached with “excessive care and warning,” given the potential penalties.
“The minerals aren’t going anyplace,” he says. “They’ve been there for tens to possibly a whole lot of 1000’s of years and, presumably, they’ll nonetheless be there hundreds of thousands of years sooner or later except we determine to use them.”
