Rare Moon Mineral Found On Earth 64
sciencehabit writes "A mineral previously known only from moon rocks and lunar meteorites has now been found on Earth. Researchers discovered the substance — dubbed tranquillityite after the Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the Moon in July 1969— at six sites in Western Australia (abstract). The mineral occurs only in minuscule amounts and has no economic value, but scientists say it could be used for age-dating the rocks in which it occurs."
Re:No Value? (Score:5, Informative)
How is there no economic value? Isn't this essentially moon rock?
Moon rocks aren't valuable because they have some special property, they aren't valuable because of exceptional heat resistance or because they repell gravity. They are so valuable because of their scarcity here on earth. People who want to study them only have a very limited supply, short of going up to the moon again and getting more - which is of course inhibitively expensive.
The moon rocks (and the ones found in WA now) are just basalt, a rather un-exciting hard stone made from magma cooling rapidly. Now, the exact conditions that take place make the basic elements within them form into a number of interesting compounds. So, like silica is the main ingredient in sand, clay and quartz, they are all unique and formed through different conditions.
The moon rocks when first analyzed contained three previously unknown compounds. Armalcolite [wikipedia.org], pyroxferroite [wikipedia.org] and tranquillityite [wikipedia.org]. The first two have since then been discovered on earth, but the third remained elusive until now, when small deposits have been found. As I said before, there isn't anything super special about this compound, it's just that it hasn't ever been found naturally formed on earth till now.