Step tsunamis wash away crystal impurity effects
Wednesday, January 20, 2016 - 06:20
in Earth & Climate
Under laboratory conditions, mineral growth is a well understood physical process, and has been for a number of decades. In nature however, outside of the controlled confines of a lab, mineral formation is far more complex and scientists are struggling to understand how crystalline minerals can form at all. Workers in the fields of mineralogy, geochemistry and biomineralization have long faced an apparent contradiction: Natural minerals are formed under conditions that should, according to existing models of crystal growth, prohibit their formation.