News Earth

Mineralogy’s link to ecology makes an Earth twin unlikely

Life not the same without the rocks

California’s Mono Lake

THE RARE EARTH  About 22 percent of minerals exist in only one locality, including a Hazenite, a phosphate mineral named for mineralogist Robert Hazen that’s made only by microbes found in California’s Mono Lake (shown). 

chris.chabot/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

By Tina Hesman Saey

- More than 2 years ago

PHILADELPHIA — The odds of finding another planet with Earth’s exact mineral composition are astronomically long, a mineralogist using tools borrowed from ecology calculates.