When sifting through old boxes or stacks of vintage papers, one often uncovers nostalgic relics from the past. But occasionally, these discoveries are far more valuable. Such was the case at the Bavarian Environment Agency (LfU) in Germany. While employees were digitizing their historic mineral collection of 130,000 exhibits, they stumbled upon one of the "rarest minerals on Earth." A handwritten letter in a drawer revealed the name of the mineral—Humboldtine. The LfU shared the details in a January 2024 press release, noting that more information would be published in Geologica Bavarica.
According to Mindat, an online mineral and rock database, humboldtine is “a rare authigenic mineral from the mineral class of organic compounds with the chemical composition Fe2+(C2O4)·2H2O.” It is a water-containing iron salt of oxalic acid, with color ranging in shades of yellow, mostly amber-yellow or lemon-yellow. With crystals small and prismatic, humboldtine forms when carbon compounds and iron-oxide react with water.
Representative Image Source: This Photo is a postcard sent home by a German soldier. (Photo by History & Art Images via Getty Images)
The mineral is typically found in the fracture surfaces in coal deposits and rarely in granitic pegmatites and hydrothermal mineral deposits. It was first discovered by German mineralogist August Breithaupt in a brown coal deposit near the municipality of Korozluky in Okres Most, according to Forbes. In the 1820s, Peruvian geologist Mariano Eduardo de Rivero y Ustariz, named the mineral after the German 19th-century naturalist and explorer Freidrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt. Von Humboldt was a former mining engineer and mineral collector.
Representative Image Source: Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)
The 75-year-old letter that the employees found was written by a coal mine owner and sent in 1949 to the agency. The letter mentions the presence of Humboldtine in the coal seams of the Matthiaszeche near the town of Schwandorf, a town on the river Naab in the Upper Palatinate. The agency asked for some samples to investigate and verify whether the mineral was humboldtine. Led by Roland Eichhorn, head of the geological department at the LfU, X-ray diffractometer, and chemical analysis were carried out of the chunk of mineral found in the archive’s drawer. They described that the mineral was “almost the size of a hazelnut.”
Representative Image Source: Pexels | The Gusstavo
“Skepticism was appropriate. Until now, Humboldtin has only been found as tiny crystals in a few places around the world. It was only through in-house laboratory analysis that we were able to provide certainty,” said Eichhorn in the press release. He further added that "together, these would turn into about a snowball that fits in one hand. And we have now found a second snowball," according to an Instagram post by The Munich Show (@the_munich_show).
The rare find is set up to be exhibited at the LfU stand at the Munich Show (Mineralientage Munchen), which will be held in October 2024. The Munich Show is Europe’s top show for minerals, fossils, gemstones & jewelry.
However, the researchers say that further information about these yellow crystals will probably remain a mystery forever because the mine in Schwandorf, mentioned in the letter, was closed in 1966, and was subsequently flooded.
This article originally appeared last year.
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selective focus photography of three brown puppies
Dogs can smell fear, but can they sniff out the truth? Your dog might actually be smarter than you're giving it credit for. It turns out, dogs are pretty good at picking up on human behavior. Science says so. A team led by Akiko Takaoka of Kyoto University in Japan conducted a study that found out that dogs actually know if you're to be believed or not.
The study involved tricking dogs in the name of science. Humans have known for a long time that if you point at an object, a dog will run to it. Researchers utilized this information in their study. During the experiment, they pointed at a container that was filled with hidden food. Sure enough, the dog ran towards the container. Then, they pointed at a container that was empty. The dogs ran towards it, but found that it had no food.
Photo by Toshi on Unsplash | This doggo has some concerns.
The third time the researchers pointed at a container with food, the dogs refused to go to the container. They knew the person pointing wasn't reliable based on their previous experience. 34 dogs were used in the experiment, and every single dog wouldn't go towards the container the third time. This experiment either proves that dogs can spot a liar or that dogs have major trust issues.
In other words, if you lie to your dog, your dog forms the opinion that your word isn't good and will behave accordingly. "Dogs have more sophisticated social intelligence than we thought. This social intelligence evolved selectively in their long life history with humans," said Takaoka, who was also surprised that dogs were quick when they devalued the reliability of a human."
John Bradshaw of the University of Bristol in the UK, who wasn't involved in this study, says that the results indicate that dogs prefer predictability. When gestures are inconsistent, dogs tend to become nervous and stressed. The researchers have plans to repeat the experiment swapping out the dogs with wolves because wolves are closely related to dogs. The point of this isn't to get bitten by wolves, but rather, to see the "profound effects of domestication" on dogs.
A similar experiment was conducted on preschool-aged children by a team of researchers led by Kimberly Vanderbilt of the University of California, San Diego. The experiment was conducted over different ages and it was found that 3-year-olds accepted advice from established liars just as much as they did from truthful people. The test found older children making the distinction between truthful people and liars. While four-year-olds were more skeptical, 5-year-olds leaned towards truthful people.