Mass Confusion - How to Name a Mineral
Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:00:00] Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you. Christopher. Mr. Chapstick [00:00:15] Bull. Heiss, what's going on?
Chris Bolhuis: Hey, can't, can't have dry lips. Jessie cannot.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: not when you're recording Planet Geo
Chris Bolhuis: No, you can't have that at all. Hey, how we
Dr. Jesse Reimink: unacceptable. Sound quality. I'm doing great. How are you?
Chris Bolhuis: I am doing [00:00:30] great. It's a rare, beautiful day outside in West Michigan today, so It is, yeah, it's, I'm doing okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's good, man. Well, I'm, uh, you know, happy you're, you're choosing it to spend it indoors in your little home recording booth here with me talking about Geology. Uh, but we [00:00:45] just saw each other recently live and in person. That was really fun. It's good to get together. It's been a while since we've done.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, we invited to speak to my alma mater. Grand Valley State University brought us in the, um, the A A P [00:01:00] G, The American Association of Petroleum Geologists Club invited us in to speak. Yeah. So, I don't know. That was kind of, it was interesting, right? We s here we are here, you and I sitting in comfy chairs up on a stage in the auditorium, [00:01:15] giving a talk about geoscience education.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: What a world. What a world. So yeah, that, that leads us kind of nicely to what we're doing today because we didn't exactly know how long we would, uh, talk for or how many questions we would get. And so we had scripted out an episode that [00:01:30] we could have recorded live, but. Knowing us, we got a little bit, maybe long-winded , but I think it was good. It was all useful stuff and we had a lot of questions from people, but we, the point is we didn't get to record this episode, so that's what we're doing now. We're just sitting down, [00:01:45] we're recording this episode. Cuz I think it's a really kind of cool, relatively short, but really cool and important topic,
Chris Bolhuis: Well, yeah, I mean, the title of it is Mass Confusion, how to Name a Mineral, um, . It is, uh, it's an [00:02:00] interesting topic. I, I, you know, it really is, but you posted a, an article here in the script here, and I opened it up and. These rules for naming a mineral. Oh my gosh. Nobody wants to read that, Jesse. I'm like you when you open it [00:02:15] up. It is. It's a pdf. It's long. There are no paragraphs in it, . It's just, it's brutal. It's
Dr. Jesse Reimink: pages and pages of single space text, 12 point font, I mean, horrible. So I, what what we're gonna try and do here, I think Chris is kind of distill this down [00:02:30] into what matters a little bit. And kind of like this episode because there's a lot, especially in the last couple years, there have been a lot of. News articles written about new minerals discovered or named, and you and I have had [00:02:45] this conversation about. How, how do people, a lot of people who listen to this podcast, read those like geoscience news articles, you know, science Daily, um, I don't know, name any of the sort of science news aggregator websites. a lot of people will read those pressure releases, send us [00:03:00] questions about some of them. And I think what kind of, what we are hitting on here is part of the theme of like, how do you read those or what do those mean? Like how important are they?
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. So it's interesting you're more into the how to name a mineral thing, but when we started [00:03:15] scripting this out, my interest went instead more towards the discovery of the new minerals themselves. How are we still discovering new minerals? And that's gonna be a part of this episode too.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, that's exactly right. And those are sort of the two things [00:03:30] we're going to talk about in this episode is what does it take to, to kind of name a new mineral or discover it for that matter. What does it mean, and you know, sort of why is it important? What does it tell us about the earth? But I think We have to back up a minute and start with the definition of a mineral. Cuz as you said, there's this huge PDF document. There's, it's a [00:03:45] very pedantic thing. Like what is a mineral, how do you define it? All that stuff. But there's some basics, right? And you cover these every year to all of your geoscience students. Like what are these basics and how do do you explain them to your students?
Chris Bolhuis: Uh, so there are five very [00:04:00] specific, tight criteria for something to be classified as a mineral where, you know, you talk about rocks, rocks is a very loose definition. but minerals is not, I, you know, it has to be these five things. So think about those. You know, I if you're sitting there listening to this episode, what are those? Five [00:04:15] things. See if you remember back to, you know, your high school years or if you took some, some classes in, in college or whatever. But This is in no particular order, but this is just kind of the way that my mind runs through it. Um, I, in order for something to be a mineral, it has to be a solid, [00:04:30] it has to be naturally occurring, which that one is, I think you would say naturally occurring is the most important one, I think. Right. Is that, is
Dr. Jesse Reimink: it'll, yes. It'll sort of be front and center in our conversation today. That's, that's the one [00:04:45] we're gonna talk about the most.
Chris Bolhuis: Yep. Yeah. The third thing is that it has to be inorganic. And this one, you know, this might go away soon. I mean, we, we interviewed a while back, Gabriela Farfan, who is a curator at [00:05:00] the Smithsonian, and she said that this one, out of there might come a time kind of like how Pluto got demoted a number of years ago. You know, it's no longer a planet now it's a dwarf planet this thing might go away too, so it might be for [00:05:15] in the future. We don't, we don't know. Well, that remains to be seen, but the fourth criteria for something to be a mineral is it needs to have a definite chemical com. And what we're talking about like this is, if the mineral is SIO two silicon dioxide, then that mineral is gonna be quartz.[00:05:30] N ACL is haylight. These are very simple formulas. What my simple mind can , memorize and recall , uh, don't ask me what biotite is,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, me neither. No, I mean, I know it has some magnesium and iron in it, and silica probably in oxygen, but you know, a whole bunch of stuff [00:05:45] added in there.
Chris Bolhuis: And then lastly, in order for something to be a mineral, it has to have a definite crystal in structure so all five of those things right now have to be met. the last one, the definite crystal in structure is more four and [00:06:00] five are related to each other because there's a definite chemical composition. There's one best way to stack. Elements together and nature finds that best way under the pressures and temperatures that exist, and so you get [00:06:15] this definite, consistent crystal and structure.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. And I think another way or, or something that I talk about in, in the geoscience class that I teach at Penn State, You can think of this word definite, like a definite chemical composition and a definite crystal and [00:06:30] structure as unique. They have to have a unique chemical composition and unique. Crystal and structure. And what that means is those both have to be unique. So there are other minerals that have the same formula, SIO two that are not quartz. they're [00:06:45] things that are higher temperature, different pressure conditions they're formed in. They have a different chemical structure. The same thing goes. There are minerals that share a crystal in structure, but have. different chemistry inside of it. Different elements go into the same structure. So [00:07:00] that's where this gets this nuanced, uh, discussion. And we're gonna focus, I think the end of our conversation. We'll focus on that a lot. Having the combination of a unique chemistry and a unique crystal structure, that's what sets a mineral apart from other minerals that have [00:07:15] similarities to it.
Chris Bolhuis: That's right. So, Jesse, you, you said earlier that we're discovering new minerals. Let's jump into that first before we get into the specifics of naming a mineral let's talk a little bit about where new minerals are commonly found, because like you [00:07:30] said, we're getting flipped articles quite a bit by our listeners about, Hey, did you see this and you see that and so on, and. We kind of narrowed it down to three places or settings where new minerals are being discovered. Right. Is that a fair
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yep. [00:07:45] Yep. Roughly. Yes. Yeah, ab
Chris Bolhuis: we, we are finding new minerals associated with diamonds or in diamonds inclusions, right, as impurities within the diamond. We're finding them also in [00:08:00] meteorites and also we're finding them from the moon. Source from the moon. Okay, so let's, talk about these, like why are these three the common places where we're discovering new minerals yet [00:08:15] today? What's going on?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: one way to think about this would be to say, well, okay, if I told you, Hey, we discovered a new mineral, where would you, where would your, like instincts say, oh, yeah, okay. I, I think it might be discovered in this location. And I, I think these [00:08:30] three categories, well, at least two of them, the moon and meteorites, those kind of make intuitive sense. Like, if you're gonna find something new, something weird, something strange. It might be an an abnormal rock, like a unique rock that we have on earth, which is meteorites in many,
Chris Bolhuis: [00:08:45] How I get that. However, media rights have been. They're not new. I mean, we've been studying meteorites for quite a while, and also it's been a long time since we've gotten direct samples from the moon,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's true. That's true. And so I think, one thing [00:09:00] is we just keep exploring these old samples, like the, the, the Apollo mission return samples and meteorites. New meteorites are landing every day, but actually more are being discovered. You know, some land, they go into private collectors. Pockets. and then they sort of come [00:09:15] back out, or pieces of them kind of get sold off into the research space. So researchers kind of look in detail. So like old meteorites are newly worked on quite frequently. but I think the more important thing is that most of the minerals on earth we've looked at now there are new minerals being discovered on earth. [00:09:30] All the time too. But we have Earth pretty well covered. There's like 6,000 or 7,000 minerals on Earth that have been described and documented and some incredibly rare ones have been found too. So we've kind of explored the surface keyword [00:09:45] surface of our planet quite well. and so
Chris Bolhuis: So that leads us to, That leads us to this, the, the idea of discovering new minerals, an association with diamonds, right? Because diamonds are brought from deep [00:10:00] within the mantle. and they're brought under very certain circumstances and you know, we'll talk about that in just a second. But diamonds are extremely high pressure. They come from deep inside the earth. So how do they get brought to the surface? [00:10:15] We talked about this a, a long time ago, Jesse, with uh, we did an episode, I think it was in season one, maybe
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah.
Chris Bolhuis: years ago we
Dr. Jesse Reimink: one of our first, first five or six episodes I think.
Chris Bolhuis: That's right. And this is near and dear to your heart. I mean, you, you know a lot [00:10:30] about this. You've studied, I think it goes back to probably your time in Alberta. but, let's get into that a little bit. How do we get a look at deeper down in the
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So let me just back up really quickly, Chris, and just get a definition in here cuz we're [00:10:45] saying discover a lot. Like, oh, we discover new minerals and we're gonna get into this. Cause that's a nuanced sort of term. There's a difference between discovering a new mineral, like finding something that has a different chemistry than we ever thought could exist, or a different mineral structure than we thought could ever exist and [00:11:00] finding something that we did not know existed before. That's sort. Discovery. I think what we're talking about frequently here is naming a new mineral and in order to name a new mineral. , we have to have a natural [00:11:15] example of it. And this is where this diamonds as a recorder of the deep earth becomes important because several of the minerals we're gonna talk about next, we've known that they exist in the earth for a long time, since the sixties or since the seventies. But [00:11:30] we've never found a natural, naturally occurring, naturally formed piece of that mineral. So we
Chris Bolhuis: Okay, hold on that now that begs the question. I gotta stop you there because then if we, we've never seen them in a natural sighting. we've been able to create them in a lab, but we've never [00:11:45] seen 'em in a natural sighting. How then did we know with no uncertainty that these minerals existed in nature? How do we know that?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: great question because, you can synthesize this in the lab. So our lab [00:12:00] technique, and you came to the Carnegie institution of science when I was there as a postdoc, and you saw these huge. Presses that do these pressure experiments, these really high pressure experiments. Think basically you take a big piston and you put a rock in between two pistons and [00:12:15] you can squeeze that to really high pressure. Like any pressure you could put on those pistons,
Chris Bolhuis: So, in other words, they're replicating the conditions deep inside the earth
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly. And the, and these get really complicated. Like Chris, you saw the big press that, what's called a multi anvil press that it's fills up a room. I mean, [00:12:30] it fills up a three story. height room, it's a huge press and so that puts a lot of pressure on these minerals. But actually the higher pressure, the highest pressures we get are very tiny little things where we take a tiny, tiny microscopic sample of a rock, [00:12:45] squish it between two diamonds, so gem quality diamonds. You think of a diamond in your ring and has that point on the bottom, so it has this point there. If you cut off the point, very small piece of the point, and you put two diamonds with their points, cut. Facing against each other, [00:13:00] kind of the diamond points pointing towards each other. Put a rocket between there. And you can get this to incredibly high pressures that replicate the deep, deep, deep earth. And so what people have done since the sixties or in the seventies and eighties throughout, uh, [00:13:15] geologic research history, have replicated the interior of the earth, the pressure, temperature conditions, and the interior of the earth through these experimental techniques. So we
Chris Bolhuis: so let, let me back this up a second. Then. Basically what you're saying is if we know [00:13:30] the chemical composition of deeper down into the earth, We know ratios and and chemistry, then we can replicate those conditions in a lab and create these minerals.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly right.
Chris Bolhuis: good assumption. Okay. All right. Okay. [00:13:45] first of all, Jesse, review, These Kimber light pipes these are these deep rooted volcanic eruptions that are quite small, actually quite rare and quite small. No human has ever witnessed one of these eruptions. They, [00:14:00] as these deep rooted volcanic eruptions rise up through the mantle. They kind of. Tear up then, um, kind of like if you're sick, you, you get this Fleming, your throat and you kind of cough. You know, there's, so it's, it's kind of coughing up and ripping up parts of the mantle [00:14:15] and bringing it with them. that's how diamonds get brought to the surface.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yep, that's absolutely right. So basically these things that coughing, rips up everything, diamonds and all sorts of other stuff. Diamonds are however, Very, [00:14:30] very chemically and physically non-reactive. So they're these little chemical capsules. So the diamonds come up and they don't really get modified by the magma too much. They, remain chemically and physically intact. And so the diamond itself is coming from [00:14:45] very deep. We have lots of samples of diamonds, so that's not a new mineral. But the diamonds also, when they're growing, grow around other minerals as they're growing. So you kind of think, you gotta picture a, [00:15:00] what's the best analogy here? So you picture deep down on the mantle, the whole thing is solid. , but you inject some of this like CO2 rich fluid, which people think diamonds kind of crystallize from. So you got this fluid that's kind of percolating through little cracks, and the diamonds grow [00:15:15] from that fluid, so they're slowly growing from that fluid. And sometimes they'll be little other minerals around and the diamond will kind of grow little impurities, but the diamond will just grow around this. It'll kind of sort of ooze around it. Like if you have Play-Doh and [00:15:30] you sort of press something into the play, and then that, that Play-Doh would like solidify and become, a diamond. Then you've got this, this thing trapped inside of it. Right. So that's what we call an inclusion
Chris Bolhuis: and sometimes you can actually see these. In fact, this is what [00:15:45] determines the quality of a gem, quality diamond the, the less inclusions that a diamond has, the more it's gonna play with light. You know, because think of these dark, almost black inclusions inside of a diamond that's gonna mess around with the way diamonds are [00:16:00] gonna, you know, make the light kind of dance around inside. And so, If you put a, you know, a lower quality diamond under a microscope, you can easily see these inclusions inside of a diamond. All diamonds have 'em. it's just a matter of like the [00:16:15] degree to which they have these inclusions. And again, if you have a diamond at home, you can take it and put it under even a 10 x uh, magnifying glass and you can see these inclusions inside of it. it's pretty easy.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah. So these inclusions, so that the diamonds have these inclusions [00:16:30] sometimes, sometimes they don't have any inclusions, and then they're really great gem quality ones. But, uh, many diamonds are not gem quality and they have inclusions in them. Those inclusions are from the deep earth and they've kind of been transported up in this. Chemical pressure [00:16:45] capsule this time capsule that records what's down deep in the earth. Because if you just took a rock, if we took, so Chris, we're gonna start talking about the depths here a minute. So let me just,
Chris Bolhuis: Can we talk about the specific, let's talk about the specific mineral bridge. Midnight. Let's, let's [00:17:00] transition into that. Okay. All right, Jesse, let's just, let's ask our our audience a second. What is the most common mineral on the planet? And, you know, most people are gonna say, Feltz bar, [00:17:15] right? I mean the, it's the most common mineral that's on the crust of the earth, and it is the most common mineral that's on the surface of the earth. But what is the most common mineral on the planet? Most people have never heard . You know, most people have [00:17:30] never heard of bridgeman night, but that's, that is the most common mineral on the planet.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So Bridgeman night, and this is one of these like sort of fantastic things that is just kind of shocking [00:17:45] to me still, is that Bridgeman night is the most common mineral on Earth. In Earth, most common mineral in earth. And it was not named, we did not have a natural piece of it until 2014. So we knew this thing was the most common. [00:18:00] We knew it was the most common mineral in earth since the sixties because of these experiments that I was talking about. But it was not named, we didn't have a natural piece of it until 2014. So here's how this works. So let's take the mantle, the mantle [00:18:15] composition, that the sort of layer of earth that is this big silicate rich layer. the composition of that is, Rock that we would call peridotite on the surface. So peridotite on the surface is olivine and [00:18:30] pyroxene dominantly usually two different types of pyroxene in a peridotite, but it's an ultra mafic composition, so it's super
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. So let's back up a second just for review purposes, right? the Rock Granite, everybody knows what Granite looks like. Granite [00:18:45] is light colored. It's, it's what we call fsic. Okay? And, that means it's a light colored rock with, which has, up to 15% black minerals, dark flex in it. And so on the opposite of that, The rock, basalt and basalt is what makes up most of the ocean [00:19:00] floor. And basalt is black, it's fine grained, it's extrusive and it's what we call mafic so what you said about peridotite, which comes out of the mantle, which a long, long time ago in an episode and probably season one, we talked about the mantle is ultra mafic. [00:19:15] So it's, it's like it's mapic on steroids. Okay. So just for review purposes, that's what we're talking about. That's peridotite and it's ultra.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And it's super rich in iron and magnesium. and so, has lower [00:19:30] silica than the other one. So it has tons of magnesium and iron in it. It is this ultra meic composition. Now, if you take a prototype at the surface prototype, the rock would be olivine. clinopyroxene and orthopyroxene. Two kind of brown greenish minerals. It'd be really dark [00:19:45] green and olive's kind of a pretty green and olive green and so that's what it would look like. Now if you took that peridotite and you put it 600 kilometers down deep in earth and at the temperature that exists at that depth, which is quite hot, what would happen [00:20:00] to it? Well, the minerals olive. clinopyroxene orthopyroxene are not stable at that depth. the, The mineral structure becomes unstable cuz the pressures are too high. So what happens is you get this mineral logical [00:20:15] conversion, you get a couple different minerals. One we call ferropericlase. One we call calcium perovskite, which
Chris Bolhuis: All right. Hey, hey, Hey, there, coach Chief. Hey, quit. Quit dropping big terms here just to get to the point.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay, well form bridgmanite. [00:20:30] The point is you form bridgmanite and you form a lot of bridgmanite. bridgmanite. will make up like 80% of the
Chris Bolhuis: Hold on. I I'm gonna interrupt you, Jesse. All right. Listen, the chemical composition of Aine is [00:20:45] MgFeSiO4. Okay. And that is a very common mineral in the upper mantle. Okay. But we're talking about deeper in the mantle and you're talking about bridgmanite, which is MgSiO3. So [00:21:00] it has the same elements, and as you just said, it has a different crystal and structure than Aine does, but it also has a slightly different chemical composition. Can we talk about that a. Why is there a slightly different chemical composition? Is it a [00:21:15] matter of what can fit in the crystal structure at this depth, or is it a matter of the ratios of the elements present?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's a combination of both. So it would be, you know, you described it as this recipe for making minerals, you know, at the [00:21:30] surface with the given amount of magnesium, iron, silica, oxygen, aluminum, all that stuff that is in Iraq with that chemical makeup, that chemical recipe, in the mantle, not at the surface, but in the mantle, LV and Klonopin. Ortho purine are the stable combination there. [00:21:45] When you go really, really deep down, those minerals are not stable, they start to break down and you need to rearrange. So we have this recipe, this soup of elements, and they need to be rearranged in a stable form. And so it's kind of a combination. we have this fixed recipe, we know what [00:22:00] the recipe is, and those elements kind of arrange themselves in the most stable. Group of minerals that they can in bridgmanite happens to be very stable. It has a magnesium, silica, and oxygen. So those are very common elements. So we end up making a lot of [00:22:15] bridgmanite in this process. And then the things that don't fit into bridgmanite go into other minerals that are stable at those extreme depths.
Chris Bolhuis: And also it's important to note too that within the mantle, this portion of the mantle that has bridgmanite is [00:22:30] extremely thick. It occurs over a pretty wide range of conditions. It's gonna be deeper down than where olivine can exist. So when we see peridotite on the Earth's surface, this Tite does not contain [00:22:45] Bridgeman night. It contains Aine and these other minerals that you alluded to before.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly, and if we go back to the Diamond and Kimber light story, if those Kimber lights were erupting, Deep, deep down where bridge mite might be stable and diamond is [00:23:00] stable, but if we took a, a block of rock, if that cough of the Kimber light coughed up some phlegm from really deep down in the mantle and grabbed some of this peridotite that has bridgmanite in it, that bridgmanite will react out very, very quickly cuz it's so unstable [00:23:15] at the surface. It loves high pressures, it does not like low pressures, and it'll change really, really quickly, kind of becomes unstable quite quickly. So, If you have a rock that erupts a Kimber light, we're not gonna find any bridgmanite in it because [00:23:30] the bridgmanite unhappy on its way up. As it transits the crust, it kind of breaks down. So what we need is to find a diamond that grew around a piece of bridgmanite that preserves it all the way to the surface. And that's exactly why it took us so long to find a piece of natural [00:23:45] bridgmanite. I even though it is the most common mineral in earth.
Chris Bolhuis: well done. I, I like the way you put that with the comparison of the way diamonds get brought to the surface and the way rocks get brought to the surface. Two very, very different processes going on. And that makes a lot of sense. [00:24:00] Alright, Jesse, so listen, I think we should transition into then naming of minerals. Okay. How's this done? What are the rules? Let's you know, let's kind of keep this tight here, but let's go through this a little bit cuz I think it's important.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think so too. I mean, basically when you, so let's say [00:24:15] 2014, you know, some scientists, they found a diamond that had this bridge, midnight in it, but it had not been named Bridge midnight yet because when they discover the natural example of this mineral that we all knew existed, now they're allowed to name it cuz they've discovered, they found the first natural.[00:24:30] Example of it, and this is what's happened in the last couple years This is what a bunch of press releases have come out over the last, I don't know, several years. Uh, you'll see this probably pretty frequently actually, if you start looking into news articles and pay attention to this, is that people [00:24:45] find an a naturally occurring example. They get to name it now, it's frowned upon to name it. After politicians, basically you have to like submit this whole thing. You have to submit the chemistry, you have to submit the structure, you have to identify and submit all this information, and then you propose a name and it goes to [00:25:00] this naming commission. where people, you know, sort of sit around and say, okay, this a unique mineral? Is this a unique crystalline structure? Does it fit the definition of a mineral? And if so, is the name appropriate? Living? People have to give their approval. So there's been a couple recently [00:25:15] that have been named after living people. One Mineral was actually named after Lindy Elkins Tanton, who's a famous scientist, um, Arizona State University. Recently, uh, one of my PhD supervisors had a mineral named after him as well recently, [00:25:30] but you can't really make compound names, so like, for instance, chrisbolhuisite I would, would probably be frowned upon just because, you know, you don't want the first and last name in there.
Chris Bolhuis: Oh, okay. But about bull High site?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Bulli [00:25:45] site would, would probably be okay. I mean, I think everybody would, would, it might be frowned to upon, cuz nobody knows how to pronounce it. It'd be like, you know, bhui site or something like that. But
Chris Bolhuis: Well, that's how, that's how we change that though. Okay. If we name a mineral after me, then everybody will know
Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:26:00] that's true. All right. So that's it. If anybody out there wants to name a mineral after Chris, he's open to it. he
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, yeah,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: being named after him,
Chris Bolhuis: yeah. That's right. That's right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Um, Basically you have to get this thing approved by a commission and, and, uh, you know, you have to think carefully about the [00:26:15] name and, and you can honor living people with it. They just have to give their approval.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. And I do say that like that happens a lot, right? Most of the new minerals have been named after people,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, many of them, you know, sometimes famous, you know, people who who've passed away. Sometimes very well known scientists who are, um,[00:26:30] who are still alive. So yeah, definitely happens.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. All right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So Chris, the, let's just list a couple of these new ones, um, that have been discovered recently. I ju I mentioned earlier that, uh, Lindy, Elkins Tanton, who she's a very, like I said, a very famous [00:26:45] scientist at Arizona State University. She had a mineral named after Elkins Tanton tonight. one of my former, um, PhD supervisors, Larry Heman, had
Chris Bolhuis: Hold on a second. I got a question for you. You said no compound names, but that is a compound name, [00:27:00] Elkins Tanton Tonight.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Elkin Stite. She has a hyphenated last name. So it's, it's Elkins Tanton is the hyphen. Yeah, exactly. So her first name is lindy, and it's an extremely, it's I think she's, uh, extremely well deserving of having a mineral named after. So I think
Chris Bolhuis: yep. I'm not taken away
Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:27:15] that.
Chris Bolhuis: that. I'm just, I'm just questioning the, uh,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, so Elkin
Chris Bolhuis: are bent.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: name,
Chris Bolhuis: Yes. Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Um, and those were both, so Elkin Stan Night was found in a meteorite, um, in one of these meteorites that had landed decades ago and had been newly [00:27:30] investigated. And these were actually discovered at the University of Alberta, where I, uh, I did my PhD,
Chris Bolhuis: This must have, been found in very, very minute quantities, right?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: well,
Chris Bolhuis: mineral.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's an interesting thing. I think they've been found in the [00:27:45] University of Alberta where I got my PhD, has been sort of discovering or naming a lot of minerals recently because of two reasons. First of all, they're huge diamond research place, so there's a lot of diamond research that goes on. So they name a lot of new minerals found in diamonds. but they also have [00:28:00] one individual who runs the electron microbe facility there who is a mineral. I say nerd, but nerd in the best way possible. Like Andrew Loock, Dr. Andrew Loock loves minerals, loves the details, like he knows the [00:28:15] formula for Biotite and he knows the formula for every other Micah there is out there, probably like this guy is an incredible repository of just chemical minerals. So he's looking at his instrument and sees, oh, this is a new chemistry. Maybe it's a new mineral. Like he's just, you know, doing routine analyses [00:28:30] and can kind of come across these because he is. Such a, uh, has such a detailed knowledge of mineral chemistry. So I think that's why really this was, discovered there. And they have a great meteorite expert who, uh, was uh, you know, sort of collects the meteorites and [00:28:45] looks at them as well. So this combination of expertise,
Chris Bolhuis: So is the chemical composition determined using mass spectrometry then?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, usually it's determined. Well, there's a bunch of different techniques for doing that, but, uh, usually it's what's called electron micro probe, analysis, which you [00:29:00] blast an electron beam at it. And then the, it gives off these characteristic electrical or x-ray signatures in diamonds, when people find stuff in diamonds, you pass x-rays through the diamond and then those x-rays interact with the mineral inclusion, and you can get both structure and chemistry [00:29:15] out of that at times. So,
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. All right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. And then there's one example of, again, a mineral we know. That exists. it occurs in the same rock that bridge Midnight will occur in, um, that is a calcium silica oxygen. [00:29:30] So c a s i oh three instead of just mg s i oh three. So what is called calcium perovskite. And this was proposed to be named davemaoite by a, a suite of, researchers. And that again, is a compound name [00:29:45] Chris. So, uh, but that was proposed to be.
Chris Bolhuis: lost on me, Jesse. I just wasn't gonna,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: we, we weren't gonna comment on it. Um, but this was, um, this has been challenged. So a, a, a variety of people disagree, [00:30:00] think that we know this calcium profs guy mineral exists super deep down in the mantle in the same rock that bridgmanite I exists in. But there are people who say, no, you haven't actually found that. That is not a piece of calcium profs guide in that inclusion in a diamond. So there's some debate [00:30:15] about this type of
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. All right, Jesse, I wanna end then, today's episode by asking the question. and, and we can each talk to this, but why is this discussion important? I mean, this is something that you and I have, have had many [00:30:30] discussions about in the past in terms of, , these little funny things that happen in Geology, right? I mean, we're talking about people that are doing, devoting massive parts of their career research to this very topic that we're talking about. So why is this an important thing [00:30:45] to consider?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, it's a great question. I'm, I'm very curious to hear your answer as well to this, Chris. I, to me understanding these weird minerals or, finding a natural example of a mineral that we know exists deep down in the earth. Like that's an [00:31:00] important. , calibration of our experiments. we don't know that it's down there for sure 100% until we find a piece of it, We don't know that the middle of the earth is made of bridgeman until we find a piece of it. Really. It's sort of confirmation. So there's, there's value in that. I also [00:31:15] think that when you discover these new minerals or find these new chemical structures, there's a lot of material science value in that. Like perovskite, the structure that bridgmanite has is a common. A com. Well, it's not [00:31:30] commonly used in commercial solar panels yet, but it is one of the things that people use in solar panels is, is minerals with that structure. So we kind of understand how minerals arrange themselves and sometimes there's actually like real societal use for just understanding the physics and the [00:31:45] chemistry of those minerals. Uh, so that's where I kind of go with it. How, how about you? What, what do you, um, what do you think about this?
Chris Bolhuis: I agree with what you said. Uh, you know, when we discovered new minerals, we're discovering. Maybe properties that this mineral has that could be important that we haven't thought of [00:32:00] yet. You know, that's the thing is, when. University research scientists do this kind of stuff. You just don't ever know really where it's gonna go, what it's gonna lead to, who's gonna take what you learned and use it for something that they're working on that [00:32:15] could lead to something super important, you know? So I, I don't know. I guess that's kind of where my mind goes with it too.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, I think so. I I agree completely with that. You know, just exploring. Sure. We, we know how Fells Bar behaves really well, cuz it's the most common mineral on the surf of the [00:32:30] earth and. That's super obviously important because it's so prevalent, like it's a hugely important mineral. but it's also viable to know about the mineral That's like 6,281 that we discover on the surface of the earth, even if it's really rare, [00:32:45] in only in one random location that we know of. It's important to understand how these things operate, cuz sometimes those little very rare ones can be incredibly important, for a lot of different stuff.
Chris Bolhuis: right? and then, you know, if we find something like this that we've never, found [00:33:00] before, then there's the also the possibility that these things can be created in the lab,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: exactly. I do think sometimes the naming thing gets a bit pedantic, you know, like, okay, do we, how do you go about naming it? What are the rules for mineral? Sometimes I, I can understand how that would [00:33:15] be, perhaps a little bit pedantic or, or sort of boring or unimportant. Some people might think, but I think the, the actual science, like the underlying understanding is super important. So, And it's kind of cool to, name minerals after people who have done a [00:33:30] lot for the field of geoscience. Um, like Linde, Elcon, stite, you know. So, things like that are kind of cool. Crisp bull, high sight. Uh, someday we'll have one perhaps, but
Chris Bolhuis: never gonna happen. gonna
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Well, I think that's a wrap, Chris, on [00:33:45] this episode. You can follow us on all the social medias. We're at Planet Geo Cast, if you wanna learn more about minerals and rocks and plate tectonics in a more detailed way with all of the key images, you can go to Camp gr, our conversational textbook. That is the first link in the show notes. Send us an email. A lot of you have, [00:34:00] you know, passed us, uh, things related to these new minerals recently. Um, and so if you have more questions or if you have new questions, please send us an email. Planet Geo Cast gmail.
Chris Bolhuis: also go back and look up our episode where we interviewed, Gabriela Farfan
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh yeah, that was a great [00:34:15] one. That was a great, great, great interview. Absolutely. Great call Chris. Hey, and also leave us a review on your podcast app, a review and a rating. Those really go a long way for helping us out with the algorithm. And you can visit our website, planet geo cast.com. There you can [00:34:30] learn more about us, find all the old episodes, transcripts, and you can support us if you. Thanks,
Chris Bolhuis: Cheers.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: cheers.[00:34:45]
[00:35:00]
