{"id":99527,"date":"2019-12-10T02:05:44","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T10:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/new-kind-of-alien-mineral-created-on-earth"},"modified":"2019-12-10T02:05:44","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T10:05:44","slug":"new-kind-of-alien-mineral-created-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/new-kind-of-alien-mineral-created-on-earth","title":{"rendered":"New kind of alien \u2018mineral\u2019 created on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-kind-of-alien-mineral-created-on-earth3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Morgan Cable crafts alien environments in miniature. She can stir up a shot-glass-size lake, unleash gentle spritzes of rain, and whip up other wonders to mimic the bizarre surface of Saturn\u2019s moon Titan. In this far-flung world, temperatures plunge hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit below zero, and rivers of liquid methane and ethane sculpt valleys into a frozen landscape of water ice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can, in a way, touch Titan here in the lab\u2014even though it\u2019s millions of miles away,\u201d says Cable, who is a scientist in the Astrobiology and Oceans Worlds Group at <a href=\"https:\/\/science.jpl.nasa.gov\/people\/MCable\/\">NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>While they\u2019ve been working with these mini worlds for years, the team\u2019s latest tiny Titan facsimile is making waves: By mixing acetylene and butane in a novel way, they\u2019ve created a previously unknown type of \u201cmineral.\u201d The new substance doesn\u2019t precisely fall under the common <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ima-mineralogy.org\/Mission.htm\">definition of an earthly mineral<\/a>, since it still requires confirmation that it can form in nature. Instead, it is technically known as a co-crystal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Morgan Cable crafts alien environments in miniature. She can stir up a shot-glass-size lake, unleash gentle spritzes of rain, and whip up other wonders to mimic the bizarre surface of Saturn\u2019s moon Titan. In this far-flung world, temperatures plunge hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit below zero, and rivers of liquid methane and ethane sculpt valleys into [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99527","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}