Rock Hounds Are on the Hunt for New Carbon Minerals
5 October 2016
15 October 2016 cover of Science News
A new challenge has scientists searching for dozens of unknown, beguiling crystals
Like many abandoned mines, the Eureka uranium mine in northern Spain is a maze of long, dank tunnels. Water seeping down the walls carries dissolved substances that percolated through rocks overhead. As the water evaporates into the tunnels’ cool air, some of those dissolved ingredients combine to make new substances in solid form.
“The mine is a crystallization factory of weird minerals,” says Jordi Ibáñez-Insa, a physicist at the Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera in Barcelona.
