NEW MINERAL DISCOVERY 101 : Kernowite

 

Kernowite: Mineral information, data and localities. (mindat.org)

Kernowite Formula: Cu2Fe(AsO4)(OH)4 • 4H2O 

Colour: Emerald-green 

Crystal System: Monoclinic

Name:

For Kernow, the Cornish language name for Cornwall.

This is the third mineral to be named after Cornwall - following cornwallite and cornubite, which are both also copper arsenates.

Type Locality:

ⓘ Wheal Gorland, St Day, Cornwall, England, UK

The Fe³⁺- analogue of liroconite. Found on an old museum specimen.

Kernowite is a complex arsenate mineral. This is a new mineral that has been discovered by scientists analysing a rock mined in Cornwall about 220 years ago. The name of the mineral comes from the word Kernow, the Cornish language word for Cornwall. A group led by Natural History Museum (NHM) mineralogist Mike Rumsey made the discovery while studying a rock taken from Wheal Gorland mine in St Day. For centuries, mineralogists believed the green crystals to be a variation of another mineral, liroconite, but Dr.Rumsey and his team found it has a different chemical composition

Source -

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mineralogical-magazine/article/kernowite-cu2feaso4oh44h2othe-fe3analogue-of-liroconite-from-cornwall-uk/

NEW MINERAL DISCOVERY 101 : Daemovite

 

Credit: Aaron Celestian/Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

A mineral was found inside a Diamond, named Daemovite in honour of the Geophysicist Ho-Kwang (Dave) 

It has a chemical composition of CaSiO3 - Perovskite

This new mineral was found in a diamond found in Orapa, Kimberlite pipe, Botswana.

It formed deep in the earth’s mantle happens to contain a mineral never seen before in nature, it may help reveal new information about the structure of the planet at depths of more than 660 kilometers.

Actually Perovskite is the most abundant substance on Earth as is makes up most of the Mantle, i.e. 80 percent of the volume of the planet.

It likely formed 660 and 900 km below the planet’s surface, says mineralogist Oliver Tschauner of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It has been synthesised in the lab earlier.

source - Geodigest (wiley.com)

COLUMNAR BASALTS OF TELANGANA

This type of Geomorphic feature has been explained well in the BBC documentary : https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001cd9m

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RiGdh9-Fvwfsc9nWMrIPJQpaJNSO2Nyx/view?usp=sharing

65 Million Year Old  Columnar Basalt Formation has been discovered in Telangana by Independent researchers, palaeontologists and archaeologists in the forests of Bazarhathnoor mandal in Adilabad district, of Telangana.The grey-brown rock with a reddish tinge is the characteristic of volcanic basalt. When uniform cooling and contraction in a homogeneous magma takes place upon being exposed to air and seawater, the parting planes tend to take on a regular columnar or prismatic form, it cracks and contracts, creating the polygonal design of these columns. 

This site could be declared as a geo-heritage site.

Reference and photo courtesy

https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/telangana/2021/aug/09/65-million-year-old-columnar-basalt-formations-discovered-in-telanganasadilabad-2342237.html

Another such well known example occurs at St Mary's Island - https://www.india.com/travel/articles/amazing-natural-wonders-of-the-world-columnar-basaltic-lava-st-marys-islands-3236121/

Gaia a hypothesis or a theory?

Gaia hypothesis proposed that the Planet Earth functions as a self-regulating system, similar to a living organism (states that that living and non-living parts of the Earth are a complex interacting system, in which living things have a regulatory effect that promotes life overall)

It suggests that species whose effects on the environment are life-enhancing will prosper, while others will not, kind of like a system of natural selection for the entire biosphere “those organisms which made their environment more comfortable for life left a better world for their progeny, and those which worsened their environment spoiled the survival chances of theirs”

Earthrise was captured by Astronaut Bill Anders #Apollo 8, 1968

The idea sparked debates and controversy when James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis proposed it during the early times of environmental activism 1970s, but Earth scientists now accept many of its basic principles.

In recent times Lovelock himself had been calling Gaia a theory.

In 2006, Lovelock published his book The Revenge of Gaia predicted disastrous effects of climate change within the next few decades, he wrote that “only a handful of the teeming billions now alive will survive”.

One can argue that we have already surpassed Gaia's powers by unintentional geoengineering this planet, pumping immense quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere

One of the paradoxical arguments is that when did Gaia begin, we know that Most Life became diversified during the Cambrian explosion, so the event of oxygen catastrophe which killed anaerobes but at the same time created the ozone layer is a bit confusing if we explain it using Gaia

We have robust evidence to say that Earth does possess the ability to recycle matter via plate tectonics and maintain a balance among the components of the Earth System

During the Great Oxygenation/Oxidation Event, the oxygenation of the Earth’s atmosphere took place and huge deposits of Banded Iron Formations forms around the planet some 2 billion years ago, and it also resulted in one of the first known mass extinctions wiping out anaerobes thriving on surface environments of and pushed them deeper down into the oceans and the crust.

There are some tantalizing phenomena in nature that can be attributed to Gaia, check this Venn diagram out

like the influence of microbes on precipitation, “the same bacteria that cause frost damage on plants can help clouds to produce rain and snow. Studies on freshly fallen snow suggest that ‘bio-precipitation’ might be much more common than was suspected.

Before a cloud can produce rain or snow, raindrops or ice particles must form. This requires the presence of aerosols: tiny particles that serve as the nuclei for condensation. Most such particles are of mineral origin, but airborne microbes — bacteria, fungi, or tiny algae — can do the job just as well. Unlike mineral aerosols, living organisms can catalyze ice formation even at temperatures close to 0 ºC”

So Gaia might not seem a real possibility but at the same time, it may sound foolish to think that on a planet filled with life, life forms do not act in their self-interest to maintain suitable conditions in their respective ecosystems, however, it is not clear when the behavior of many species as be described as a superorganism having some level of consciousness.

I find Gaia a dangerous idea because it can cause us to care less about the planet and keep on the business-as-usual attitude, ending on a positive note I hope that we can come to terms with the current issues and solve them before it is too late.

MESSINIAN SALINITY CRISIS

 

MESSINIAN SALINITY CRISIS

Around 6 million years ago, tectonic movements caused the merger of the strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Ocean became the Mediterranean Desert, it was temporarily cut off from the Atlantic Ocean, and as time passed excess evaporation of seawater led to the formation of huge deposits of salt kilometers-thick throughout the entire basin, as much as 6% of the ocean’s salt was transformed into giant deposits left on the Mediterranean seafloor due to sedimentation.

The event is called the Messinian Salinity Crisis, as it happened during the Messinian epoch on the Geological Time Scale (GTS).

The consequences of this event were drastic shifts in both aquatic and land ecosystems due to changes in regional climate and harsh geochemical conditions.

Eventually, the same tectonic forces that caused the crisis pulled apart the African and European Plates and opened up the Strait of Gibraltar, and reconnected the Mediterranean to the Atlantic around 5.3 million years ago, at the Miocene–Pliocene boundary in the GTS.

Geologic evidence suggests that the Mediterranean filled up rapidly      (most of the Mediterranean basin seems to have been refilled in no more than two years ) after the opening of the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Messinian salinity crisis ended with a Megaflood that carved the ocean floor and a huge (At peak discharge water poured in at a rate of 100 million cubic meters per second.) waterfall formed at the Strait of Gibraltar as imagined in this illustration published in The Atlantic Monthly.

Some recent evidence suggests that during the end of the Messinian salinity crisis the quick disappearance of a land bridge between Europe and Africa affected the migration of mammals, had the connection not disappeared, “hominins might have arrived in Europe much earlier than 1.2 million years ago.”, however, there is more to the story.

The Desertification of the Mediterranean caused an increase in volcanic activity in the surrounding region, it worked a bit like this:

Large-scale evaporation and rapid sea-level fall in the Mediterranean basin would have unloaded the crust and reduced the burden on the underlying mantle

This caused a Mantle decompression and led to partial melting of rocks underneath,                        

The same process allowed more magma to migrate towards the surface via dykes (vertical magma tubes), generating increased volcanism at the surface

Bibliography :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00fzsth

Hsü, K. J. The Mediterranean was a Desert (Princeton Univ. Press, 1983).

The Story of the Rocks of the Egyptian Pyramids

Did you know that the Egyptian Pyramids were built of granite at the core and had a nice finish of limestone on the top?

This is what the Pyramids would have looked like when they were completed 4000 years ago, Shiny white with perhaps a gold crown, they would have shone bright enough to be visible from far distances in the desert.

The Limestones that were once used to coat the pyramids are actually of a special kind called Nummulites or ‘coin-stones’, these are made of the dead remains of ancient oceanic microbes known as foraminifera. Of the 300 species still alive today, Nummulites gizehensis is particularly abundant in the 56-Million-year-old (Eocene) rocks of Egypt which were used as building stones for the Great Pyramids of Giza. (These forams have been found as early as 65 million years ago in the fossil record)

These forams were deposited in a shallow seaway that covered Egypt during much of the Late Palaeocene. As time passed, their shells piled up and created a thick layer of limestone rock. Further, as the sea retreated and a desert landscape began to replace it.

These Nummulites are also rich in Petroleum resources for the very reason, that the dead decayed parts of forams have accumulated in hydrocarbon traps and the conditions found in the subsurface have allowed the formation of fluids that can be extracted by the oil industry

The oil-rich zones are found in the offshore Bourri field, Libya; the offshore Ashtart and Hasdrubal fields, Tunisia; the Kerkennah, etc.

Over time, the limestone has either weathered away or has been taken away for construction purposes in recent centuries.

Some pyramids may well last into the next Ice Age. By then, humankind should have constructed structures on Earth and other planets which will make the pyramids look like a "piece of cake", but they will remember the people who built the pyramids and carry on their legacy into the future.

Further information can be obtained at the following link: https://youtu.be/ujX9MEnYzU4

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/great-pyramid-giza-egypt-casing-stone/

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/06/the-great-pyramid-of-giza-was-once-covered-in-highly-polished-white-limestone-before-it-was-removed-to-build-mosques-and-fortresses/?chrome=1

PREHISTORIC PLANET

Every week, a new species of dinosaur or other ancient creature is discovered, and our understanding of life on Earth grows slightly.

Normally, scientists find it difficult to communicate their discoveries to the general public, but Hollywood can help. The most recent film in the Jurassic World series, Dominion, is excellent, but it does not get everything right. All the characters are not represented and it's not scientifically flawless, but still, it's great for introducing the concept of dinosaurs to first-timers and ignorant people.

t rex could swim!

So to quench your curiosity and learn more about the Prehistoric life forms, you can look up illustrated books, articles, and documentaries,, etc

A recent documentary PREHISTORIC PLANET, hosted by Sir David Attenborough, is produced by Apple in collaboration with BBC Studios and is an epic series that takes the audience on a wild ride, if only it was available in 3D!

It has a lot of detail and accuracy which one will never expect from a sci-fi movie.

8-ton Deinocherius living in wetlands, it was a duckbilled dinosaur taller than T rex

It comes as a surprise to Geology students too, that there were so many kinds of dinosaurs that were highly variable in appearance and behavior.

BBC Studios is also working on renewing its older series on Dinosaurs.

Here’s a list of Indian dinosaurs, If you already didn't know:

Rajasaurus narmadensis

tagori

Bruhakhayalasaurus

Jainosurus

Majungasaurus

Titanosaurus indica

Indosaurus  and many more

learn more her https://iknowdino.com/moros-episode-394/

PANDORA'S GEOLOGY (AVATAR 2009)

The 2009 science fiction movie AVATAR hinted at the future possibilities of the final frontier of Human Civilization, the film portrayed what a human colony might look like and what kind of logistics would be involved to travel and live in the cosmic neighbourhood, the upcoming movie would explore the rest of the moons in the planetary system, as seen in the trailer, we can expect an ocean moon, with very/little continents.

 

Based on the 5000+ discovered exoplanets and star systems, the planetary system shown in AVATAR is very realistic, a similar fictional planetary system was shown in the series of COSMOS Possible World’s which was inspired by the TRAPPIST - 1 star system

 

"TRAPPIST-1 Planet Lineup" by the US Department of State is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

It might surprise you that astronomers have found an earth-sized planet in the Alpha Centauri Star System. (actually, the movie is set in the year 2154 in the Alpha Centauri Star System)

 

The blue-skinned Indigenous humanoids live on the Planet/ moon Pandora orbit around a Jupiter like Gas Giant, the amazing life forms shown in the movie (horse-like creatures with six legs and pterosaur like dragons) appear biomechanically feasible as the planet/moon has a weaker gravity due to its smaller size, it’s atmosphere has some gases toxic to humans, that’s why they gotta wear gas masks.

 

"Avatar Hallelujah Mountain" by virtualwayfarer is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

The moon-planet Pandora has continents covered in tropical rainforests. Pandora also has significant amounts of a precious fictional element called unobtanium, which has shaped the most interesting landscapes shown in the movie, the floating Hallelujah Mountains are inspired from a real place in China, where tall sandstone Qiankunzhu pillars are present.

SOLAR APPRECIATION DAY

"File:Artist’s impression of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system.jpg" by ESO/N. Bartmann/spaceengine.org is marked with CC BY 4.0.

Solar Appreciation Day is celebrated on the 2nd Friday of March.

The Sun itself is just a huge ball of plasma made of hydrogen and helium held together by gravity and powered by nuclear fusion.

Around 4.5 billion years ago, when Earth's magma ocean was still cooling down, the sun was 30% dimmer than it is now, but the climate was as warm as it is now.

This dilemma is known as the "faint young Sun paradox."

The hazy atmosphere of early Earth was probably made of fewer reflective gases in the upper part of the atmosphere and powerful greenhouse gases in the lower parts.

Without greenhouse gases like methane, early Earth would have frozen into an ice ball for the first few billion years of its existence.

Even Carl Sagan got troubled by the "faint young Sun paradox". The most debated explanation is something called the Gaia hypothesis, is a weird concept but it says that all the life on Earth, especially the microbes that operate the Earth's life support system, can change the composition of the atmosphere and transform it such that it creates a nice climate on Earth.

The exact way, how microbes can do this is not completely understood by scientists yet.

One other thing that bothers me is that, just before the "Great Oxygenation Event," why did anaerobic bacteria allow oxygen-producing microbes to oxygenate Earth's atmosphere? which ultimately doomed most of the anaerobic bacteria.

The James Webb Space Telescope, launched last year on Christmas Day, is still cooling down in deep space to allow its infrared instruments to start operating.

The first images are expected in a few months. JWST also can study the earliest stars and planets, which can resolve some of the most debated issues in Astronomy, Astrobiology, Planetary Geology, and other unknown questions!

USE OF SLATES IN CONSTRUCTION

source (Ian Sanders)

Proterozoic slates from Himachal Pradesh have been used a lot in the Himalayas. 

These deposits occur in Himachal Pradesh’s Chamba, Kangra, Mandi, Kullu, Shimla, Sirmaur, Kinnaur, and Solan districts, they have been quarried since ancient times.

Shimla Town Hall Building, the Gaiety Theatre, Sarahan Palace and Bhimakali Temple, temples of Champavati and Laxmi Narayan are all made of this rock.

Slates are metamorphic rocks, it is highly fissile in nature, i.e. they can be split easily into thin, flat sheets with smooth surfaces. The sheets themselves on their own without any coating are strong, impermeable to water, and resistant to weathering, when built properly structures made from this rock can last several decades

This makes it the ideal material of choice for use in roofing, paving, fencing, and flooring as they are flexible and less prone to damage in hilly areas where the hazards from Earthquakes are high.

Some of these Slates could be from the Ediacaran Period 63 Crore years Old! when first complex life forms were still evolving, however usually fossils may not be preserved in slates. 

DECCAN TRAPS

 

A view of the Ajanta Caves excavated in the gorge wall of the Waghur/Waghora River. The caves, listed as a World Heritage Site, are excavated in compound lava flows. The Buddhist cave monuments date from 2nd century BCE to 6th century CE 

(Photo courtesy of Francesca Lugeri)

At the end of the Cretaceous, the western part of peninsular India underwent numerous volcanic eruptions that resulted in the formation of the Deccan Traps. A total of 48 lava flows have been identified within the Deccan Traps, with a maximum thickness of about 2.5 km on the western side of the plateau near Mumbai. The Deccan Traps are spread over half a million square kilometers in the west-central parts of India, and they occupy huge areas of the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka. India also has the longest lava flows known to be preserved. They are estimated to be 1500 km long and drain out into the Gulf of Bengal near Rajahmundry in Karnataka.

Many archaeological monuments like the Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain temples of Ajanta, Ellora, and Elephanta are the oldest in-situ basalt cave temples, dating back to the second century. They also have the oldest known cave paintings on the Indian subcontinent. However, this title could be snatched by the recent discoveries in Mangar Bani, near the outskirts of Delhi.

At least 4 of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India, like the Ajanta, Ellora, and Elephanta cave temples, and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus), is made of this basalt.

Deccan basalts are in high demand worldwide and are mined for a variety of purposes including masonry stone, road metal, and as a raw material for corrosion-resistant basaltic pipes and basalt wool.

Quarrying of Deccan basalt is done in the western Deccan Plateau region, especially around Navi Mumbai, Aurangabad, Jalgaon, Nashik, and Kolhapur.

Basalt is a dark-colored, fine-grained, extrusive igneous rock (i.e., the molten rock or lava cooled on the surface) 

Basalt flows cover about 70% of the Earth’s surface and huge areas of terrestrial planets.

They come from the mantle. When rocks melt under pressure and temperature, they then make their way up to the surface via ducts and feed fissure volcanoes on the surface.

Future studies could gather more evidence about the environmental conditions that led to the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and gigantic reptiles. 

The massive Deccan volcanic mountain ranges of the Western Ghats (east of Mumbai) reach up to a height of 3500 m and consist entirely of layered lava flows. (photo courtesy of G. Keller)

HOW TO BYPASS NATURE JOURNAL PAYWALL

Here is one way to bypass the nature paywall and access articles published online on the website https://www.nature.com/

Open up the website

Choose the relevant article page

Edit the web address by putting the extension .epdf at the end and press enter

This will allow you to read single-page articles like research highlights free of cost, and give you unlimited access to supplementary data of research papers!  

Use these options when there is nothing on extensions like Unpaywall and pre-print servers etc.

THE DAY DINOSAURS DIED

Artist depiction of the Asteroid 

Credit – Scotese Paleomap project (this map shows the position of continents when the cretaceous Paleogene mass extinction occurred )

Do you know what happened on the very day dinosaurs died?

Well, according to the latest research done by geologists, it was the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere ( Autumn in the southern hemisphere) when the dino-killing asteroid smashed into the Yucatán Peninsula, off the coast of Mexico (present-day Chixulub).

In a paper recently published in nature, scientists used fossils from a site in North America in North Dakota’s southwest region known as Tanis.

The fossils were deposited by a seiche in a river. seiche is similar to a tsunami wave, but it happens inland, perhaps due to a strong earthquake.

The fossils of the fish present here contained glass spherules that were created due to the asteroid impact, which threw a large amount of molten rock material into space. The liquid rock crystallized, & cooled in space, and fell back down all over the planet. The fish that lived here ingested these and got trapped inside them.

Further researchers were able to figure out the season using the bones of fish.

The timing of the impact was also crucial from our point of view because, during spring, mammals hibernate underground and were very lucky when the asteroid struck

The asteroid that struck the Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago, was at least the size of Mount Everest. It managed to wipe out more than 70 % of all life present on Earth during that time, including the non-avian dinosaurs & giant reptiles.

This event is officially known as the "Cretaceous Paleogene (K- Pg) mass extinction".

The initial impact itself released energy equivalent to billions of nuclear weapons all at once. Thermal radiation melted & vaporized anything within a radius of 1500 km, & the impact debris caused the atmosphere to heat up.

The remainder of the energy was transferred into the Earth's crust, resulting in magnitude 11 earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Massive wildfires raged for months across the globe, releasing aerosols and soot into the upper atmosphere, causing temperatures to plummet and the planet to enter a period of darkness comparable to a nuclear winter. Global photosynthesis was halted due to a lack of sunlight, but fungi thrived on the corpses left behind.

Some debates are still raging on this issue, as the Deccan Traps of India were erupting before the Asteroid struck, either way, it seems that the Global ecosystem was already collapsing 66 million years ago.

You can learn more about this topic on -

Palaeocast | Palaeontology podcasts

BBC One and David Attenborough to reveal the final day of the dinosaurs - Media Centre

https://youtu.be/dFCbJmgeHmA

MILITARY GEOLOGY

SOURCE - Bing

We may be due for a third world war. There are many examples of countries fighting over silly things. The reasons could be as mundane as a border defined based on a river that is prone to changing its flow direction according to changing conditions.

For example, along the north-eastern border of India, China has been trying to invade the state of Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese may be trying to do so in search of new sources of minerals and other raw materials to support their economy. However, Indian geologists also know the significance of the area as they have already discovered precious deposits of uranium, lithium, helium, and rare earth elements.

Recently, the Russian Federation has declared War on Ukraine. There are many geopolitical reasons for this move by Russia, but one of the most significant might be to exploit the deposits of coal, iron ore, natural gas, manganese, salt, oil, graphite, sulfur, kaolin, titanium, nickel, magnesium, timber, and mercury.

ALWAR QUARTZITE

"Stonework of the Mughals - Humayun's Tomb" by Trey Ratcliff is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Alwar Quartzite has been used to build monuments in Delhi and North India, such as the Purana Quila & Humayun’s tomb.

_{Quartz is resistant to weathering and can last for millennia. The monuments built by the rulers of Delhi stand as a testament to this.}

_{These rocks come from the parts of the Aravalli Mountain Range exposed in Delhi.}

_{Alwar Quartzite is exposed along the Delhi Ridge. This feature was once a continuous ridge over a century ago, but today it has been used up by mining done during urbanization and reduced to outcrops in the South Delhi region. These can be seen at Tughlaqabad, Okhla, Bhatti Mines area, Asola, Mandi, Greater Kailash, Vasant Kunj, Naraina, and the Buddha Jayanti Park.}

At the turn of this century, legal mining was stopped around Delhi, due to environmental conditions 

RAMGARH CRATER

source - Google Earth

At Ramgarh, a quiet village in Rajasthan, a 4 km hole is punched into the ground. It is a circular impact crater rising abruptly (the wall is about a km high) in the plain area surrounded by vast agricultural fields.

This structure was first noticed in 1869. Since then, it has been studied by geologists and confirmed to be a meteorite impact crater later.

Apart from some temples, there are two water bodies present within the crater filled with rainwater. Migratory birds have been observed here. This area is considered a potential Geological Heritage Site in India as it is archaeologically, biodiversity-wise, and geologically important.

Coordinates—25°20'8.90"N, 76°36'23.70"E