Minerals

Swedish government-owned mining company LKAB has reported the largest deposit of rare earth metals ever discovered in Europe – more than a million tonnes of rare earth oxides, which will be invaluable in the race toward decarbonization.

Modern concrete starts to fall apart within decades – but ancient Roman structures are still standing strong after 2,000 years. Engineers have found an inclusion that helps ancient concrete self-heal cracks, and shown how we can recreate the recipe.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has discovered opal on Mars. The deposits may prove to be valuable to future Martian explorers not as jewelry but as a potential source of water.

Scientists have discovered at least two new minerals inside one of the largest meteorites ever found. The iron-based minerals have never been spotted in nature, and could hint at unknown geological processes and new material uses.

Rare earth elements are vital for electronics, but they’re in short supply. Now scientists have recreated a promising alternative – a “cosmic magnet” that normally takes millions of years to form in meteorites is cooked up in the lab in seconds.

Predicting the likelihood and severity of earthquakes is important, but it’s hard to account for all factors. Researchers in New Zealand have now uncovered an overlooked factor that could affect the impact of the next big quake – tiny marine fossils.

It seems China's Chang'E-5 robotic Moon mission has discovered more than water on the lunar surface. Scientists have confirmed the discovery of a new mineral, a transparent crystal named Changesite-(Y), as well as a promising potential fusion fuel.

Geologists claim to have discovered a long-term cycle that may link the formation of Earth’s continents to our travels through the galaxy. The team claims a correlation between increased comet impacts and Earth crossing the galactic spiral arms.

If there are two things that are essential to human life, they're water and oxygen – neither of which are easily available on the moon. Thanks to a new technique, though, astronauts may someday be able to harvest those elements from lunar soil.

Composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, gypsum is a naturally occurring mineral used in building materials. Scientists have now devised a method of creating synthetic gypsum, which should be more energy efficient than processing the genuine article.

Scientists have discovered a strange new form of crystal that was forged in the first nuclear weapons test. Known as a "quasicrystal," the curious creation is made out of desert sand and copper wiring arranged in an extremely rare atomic structure.

Researchers have found that the concrete walls in a decommissioned power plant in Japan have not only kept their strength over the decades but have actually gotten stronger with use, thanks to a rare mineral also found in ancient Roman concrete.