Mineralogy articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Hydrous minerals within the Earth affect volatile cycling and mantle geodynamics. Jun Tsuchiya explains how stable phases of these minerals are being uncovered at increasingly high pressures.

    • Jun Tsuchiya

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Burbankite is a rare sodium carbonate mineral that is easily dissolved away in its host igneous rocks. Its formation and dissolution can help concentrate rare earth elements that are vital for a low-carbon future, as Sam Broom-Fendley explains.

    • Sam Broom-Fendley

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Schreibersite is found in meteorites and thought to dwell in planetary cores. Tingting Gu explains how it may also have supported life on the early Earth.

    • Tingting Gu

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Nephrite jade is a semi-precious gemstone composed of tiny crystals and needles of amphibole. Here, Matthew Tarling and Steven Smith describe how its origins lead to inner toughness and beauty.

    • Matthew S. Tarling
    •  & Steven A. F. Smith

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Carbonates are key minerals for understanding fluids and their interactions with near-surface environments. Ashley King explores their significance on Earth, and beyond.

    • Ashley J. King

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Recording 4.3 billion years of Earth’s history, Jesse Reimink explores the many ways that zircon allows geologists to keep track of the past.

    • Jesse Reimink

  • All Minerals Considered |

    From pressure indicator to paint brightener, Alicia Cruz-Uribe examines the many uses of rutile.

    • Alicia M. Cruz-Uribe

  • Research Briefing |

    The post-garnet transition has been found to have a curved phase boundary, with negative slopes in cold regions and positive slopes in hot regions of the Earth’s mantle. This varying slope could be a reason for the puzzling dynamics of subducting slabs and upwelling plumes observed seismically in the upper part of the lower mantle.

  • All Minerals Considered |

    More than just a gemstone, Jon Pownall and Kathryn Cutts explore the history and future directions of garnet as a recorder of pressure, temperature, and time.

    • Jonathan M. Pownall
    •  & Kathryn A. Cutts

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Inspired by the mineralogist Shulamit Gross’s studies of one of the world’s unique mineral factories, Michael Anenburg discusses the pyrometamorphic minerals formed by fire in the Dead Sea desert.

    • Michael Anenburg

  • Article |

    The lunar basalts sampled by the Chang’e-5 mission originated from melting of a clinopyroxene-rich mantle source enhanced in radioactive elements, potentially explaining this late lunar volcanism, according to sample analysis and crystallization modelling.

    • Biji Luo
    • , Zaicong Wang
    •  & Hongfei Zhang

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Following on from insights gleaned from iron meteorites, Claire Nichols explains why tetrataenite, with its unique magnetic properties, could be key for future renewable energy technologies.

    • Claire I. O. Nichols

  • All Minerals Considered |

    From the tools of Stone Age ancestors to records of Earth’s history, Yang Li and Xian-Hua Li explore how the properties of quartz place it at the heart of human innovation.

    • Yang Li
    •  & Xian-Hua Li

  • Article |

    Manganese oxidation experiments in Mars-like fluids suggest that chlorate and bromate may have been more effective oxidants of manganese on early Mars than atmospheric oxygen and explain observed manganese oxide deposits.

    • Kaushik Mitra
    • , Eleanor L. Moreland
    •  & Jeffrey G. Catalano

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Earth’s most abundant mineral — bridgmanite — lies hidden in the lower mantle, but Li Zhang is hopeful that advances in analytical techniques may reveal the inner workings of our world.

    • Li Zhang

  • Article |

    Marine emissions of N2O could have sustained an early Archaean atmosphere of 0.8–6.0 ppb N2O without a protective ozone layer, according to mineral incubations combined with diffusion and photochemical modelling.

    • Steffen Buessecker
    • , Hiroshi Imanaka
    •  & Hinsby Cadillo-Quiroz

  • Article |

    Neoarchaean arc magmas in Superior Province, Canada, were relatively oxidized and sulfur rich, reaching compositions comparable to modern subduction zones by approximately 2.7 Ga, according to analysis of sulfur speciation in zircon-hosted apatite grains.

    • Xuyang Meng
    • , Adam C. Simon
    •  & Jeremy P. Richards

  • Q&A |

    Nature Geoscience spoke with Dr Qingyang Hu, a high-pressure mineralogist at HPSTAR; Prof. Suzan van der Lee, a geophysicist at Northwestern University; and Prof. Katherine Kelley, a geochemist at the University of Rhode Island about their work and what the future of deep-water research might bring.

    • Rebecca Neely

  • Editorial |

    Research efforts from across the geosciences are uncovering how water deep within the Earth affects its fundamental workings.

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Jörg Hermann suggests that as the process of serpentinization leads to clean energy generation, metal separation and carbon sequestration, it could serve as a natural analogue for a sequential economy.

    • Jörg Hermann

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Delving into recent and historical discoveries, Ananya Mallik explains how diamonds track the workings of the deep Earth that are hidden from view.

    • Ananya Mallik

  • Editorial |

    Permeating every aspect of life – and each with a multitude of stories to tell – we celebrate the utility, beauty and wonder of minerals in a new column: all minerals considered.

  • Article |

    Oceanic crust subduction sequesters substantial amounts of argon in the Earth’s mantle, while atmosphere-derived argon affects only the isotopic composition and not the overall budget, according to geodynamic–geochemical models of mantle convection.

    • Jonathan M. Tucker
    • , Peter E. van Keken
    •  & Chris J. Ballentine

  • Article |

    The inner core underwent preferential equatorial growth and translation after nucleation ~0.5–1.5 billion years ago, according to an analysis of its seismic anisotropy and self-consistent geodynamic simulations.

    • Daniel A. Frost
    • , Marine Lasbleis
    •  & Barbara Romanowicz

  • Article |

    Transformation kinetics of olivine may be a cause of deep-focus earthquakes even in wet slabs, according to water-partitioning experiments, which show that olivine remains relatively dry even under wet subducting slab conditions.

    • Takayuki Ishii
    •  & Eiji Ohtani

  • News & Views |

    Hydrogen ions move freely within the crystal structure of a hydrous mineral under lower mantle conditions, resulting in high electrical conductivity that may make it possible to map water in the deep mantle.

    • Tetsuya Komabayashi

  • Article |

    Under conditions of Earth’s deep lower mantle, hydrogen ions diffuse freely through the FeOOH lattice framework and electrical conductivity increases rapidly, according to electrical conductivity experiments and first-principles simulations.

    • Mingqiang Hou
    • , Yu He
    •  & Ho-Kwang Mao

  • Article |

    The Earth’s core may host most of the planet’s water inventory, according to calculations of the partitioning behaviour of water at conditions of core formation.

    • Yunguo Li
    • , Lidunka Vočadlo
    •  & John P. Brodholt

  • Article |

    In relatively cold subducted slabs, olivine may transform to finer-grained, weaker ringwoodite than in warm slabs, according to deformation experiments under conditions analogous to those in the mantle transition zone and scaling analysis.

    • Anwar Mohiuddin
    • , Shun-ichiro Karato
    •  & Jennifer Girard

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