{"id":176668,"date":"2023-11-24T16:23:54","date_gmt":"2023-11-24T22:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/crystals-grown-with-help-from-electron-beam-solve-200-year-old-geological-mystery"},"modified":"2023-11-24T16:23:54","modified_gmt":"2023-11-24T22:23:54","slug":"crystals-grown-with-help-from-electron-beam-solve-200-year-old-geological-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/crystals-grown-with-help-from-electron-beam-solve-200-year-old-geological-mystery","title":{"rendered":"Crystals Grown With Help From Electron Beam Solve 200-Year-Old Geological Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/seSE0kGQqc4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A mystery that has dogged materials science for 200 years has finally been solved. A mineral found in many ancient rock formations had stubbornly resisted the efforts of scientists to grow it in the lab, even though they could recreate the conditions they thought formed it in nature. Now, a team has cracked the problem, figuring out how to speedily grow dolomite crystals for the very first time.<\/p>\n<p>Dolomite is a mineral so important, there\u2019s a whole <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/Dolomites\" target=\"_blank\">mountain range<\/a> named after it. As well as these peaks in the Italian Alps, dolomite is abundant in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/fossilized-cosmic-dust-discovered-in-the-white-cliffs-of-dover-43636\" target=\"_blank\">White Cliffs of Dover<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/a-record-breaking-number-of-hoodoos-can-be-found-in-bryce-canyon-67380\" target=\"_blank\">hoodoos<\/a> of Utah, and other rocks dating back more than 100 million years. It actually accounts for almost 30 percent of minerals of its type \u2013 carbonates \u2013 in the Earth\u2019s crust, but it\u2019s notably absent in rocks that formed more recently.<\/p>\n<p>Despite trying to carefully recreate its natural growing conditions, scientists have failed for two centuries to produce dolomite crystals in the lab. To solve the mystery, they had to get back to basics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A mystery that has dogged materials science for 200 years has finally been solved. A mineral found in many ancient rock formations had stubbornly resisted the efforts of scientists to grow it in the lab, even though they could recreate the conditions they thought formed it in nature. Now, a team has cracked the problem, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}