Unique new mineral – PutnisiteGeologists find new minerals all the time. Whenever one is found

Unique new mineral – PutnisiteGeologists find new minerals all the time. Whenever one is found, the mineral is characterized chemically and its structure is examined using X-rays. Most of the time, new minerals can be readily explained by knowing a bit of mineralogy and looking at a periodic table. This one can’t be.On the periodic table, elements that are above and below each other often have similar chemical properties. Rubidium, for example, often sits in the same spot in minerals that Potassium does as it sits directly below it. Most new minerals are the result of substitutions like that; if a rare element is concentrated enough, a new mineral will form with the same structure as known minerals but with a different composition.That’s what makes Putnisite unique. This beautiful blue mineral contains strontium, calcium, carbonate groups, sulfate groups, and water in its structure, but its structure isn’t anything that’s been characterized before. However it was made, it is a unique way of stacking atoms together that we’ve never seen on Earth before. Some of the atomic layers form rings, others form sheets, and there are hydrogen bonds holding those layers together. We’ve made many materials synthetically as well and still, based on this data, never combined elements into the same structure as putnisite.The mineral was discovered in a mine at Lake Cowan, Australia, and it was named after Andrew and Christine Putnis; a pair of the Institut für Mineralogie, Universtität Münster for their contributions to mineralogy. It forms these brilliant blue, nearly-cubic crystals, and it is very soft, with a hardness of 1-2 on the Mohs scale.-JBBImage credit and original paper (image is ~0.25 mm across):http://minmag.geoscienceworld.org/content/78/1/131.abstract -- source link

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