What is the rarest mineral on Earth?

 Myanmar is home to the one and only specimen of the world's rarest mineral.



Quartz is the most common mineral on Earth, and most people have seen it without realizing it. However, which mineral is the rarest?


Minerals can be found in a variety of forms, from glistening specks in sand or gravel to actual, buried gems. The U S Geological Society states that minerals are inorganic, meaning they do not contain carbon, naturally occurring elements or compounds. Each kind of mineral has a distinct chemical composition and internal structure that is organized. The crystal structure of a mineral and its other physical properties can vary.


K Y-A W T H U-I T-E is the earth's rarest mineral. There is only one known crystal, and it was found in the M O G O K region of Myanmar. The International Mineralogical Association (IMA) officially recognized it in 2015 as a small, deep orange gemstone, according to Caltech's mineral database (opens in new tab).


According to George R O S M-A N, a professor of mineralogy at Cal Tech who has been researching pain ite since the 1980s and maintains an extensive database of all the samples he has analyzed microscopically, the English gem collector and dealer Arthur Pain acquired two crimson crystals in Myanmar in 1952.


Pain thought the crystals were rubies, which the area is famous for, but he was unaware that they were something much more uncommon


Along with rubies and other gemstones, pan ite, which was given the name Arthur, is occasionally discovered. This explains why R O S M-A N claims that, when Pain donated the crystals to the British Museum in 1954 for further research, he assumed they were rubies. Until 2001, those three crystals were the only pain ite samples known to exist anywhere in the world. In 1979, another pain ite sample from Myanmar surfaced.


R O S M-A N later conducted an analysis of the initial pain ite crystal, pain ite. In 2018, his most recent study on pain ite was published in Mineralogical Magazine.


He told Live Science, "I conducted studies on the first sample". My findings became the benchmarks by which other pain ite discoveries were confirmed.


R O S M-A N discovered the components of pain ite through this study. Using infrared spectroscopy, elements are identified based on how they absorb, reflect, and emit light using infrared radiation. A laser is used in R-A M-A N spectroscopy to scatter visible, infrared, or ultraviolet light, which causes the molecules to emit distinctive vibrations that help identify them.


R O S M-A N also discovered a mistake in the British Museum's initial chemical composition analysis. The element zirconium was missing, despite them correctly identifying oxygen, calcium, boron, and aluminum. R O S M-A N also discovered what gave pain ite its reddish hue; It may deceive you into thinking that it is a ruby because it contains traces of vanadium and chromium.


But why is pain ite so uncommon? First, it only exists in Myanmar, but its true origins lie in its formation. Pain ite is a boron-containing crystal because it is a borate. It also has zirconium in it. Zirconium-boron bonds are notoriously difficult to form. In fact, pain ite is the only mineral in nature in which the two are bonded together.


According to R O S M-A N, zirconium and boron have not been found together in significant concentrations, despite the fact that the reason for this is still unknown. Additionally, it is thought that, in comparison to other elements with which they could bond, these elements may not be very stable together.


My insight, nobody has done a serious investigation of the stuff to shape pain ite, R O S M-A N said. " It has never been attempted to be synthesized in a laboratory, as far as I know"

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