Latest Petrology Stories
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online In addition to being fairly unpredictable, volcanoes can eject a wide range of material, from mile-high plums of black ash to a deadly hail of fist-sized pumice. These ejections travel extremely fast and can reach internal temperatures between 750 to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The prevailing theory has been that the difference in particle size determined when bubbling magma deep below the volcano converts into a rising stream of gas and...
VANCOUVER, July 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - Focus Ventures Ltd. (TSXV: FCV) is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Aurora porphyry copper-molybdenum property located in the Department of Cusco, Peru. The property is located between 2,600 - 2,900m above sea level on the northeastern margin of the Yauri-Andahuaylas porphyry belt, host to several important copper and copper-gold deposits including Las Bambas, Huaquira, Constancia, Tintaya and Antapaccay mines. Focus can acquire...
New Geology articles posted online ahead of print June 15 Orange-like rocks in Utah with iron-oxide rinds and fossilized bacteria inside that are believed to have eaten the interior rock material, plus noted similarities to "bacterial meal" ingredients and rock types on Mars; fine-tuning the prediction of volcanic hazards and warning systems for both high population zones and at Tristan da Cunha, home to the most remote population on Earth; news from SAFOD; and discovery in Germany of the...
TSXV: LCO US Symbol: ECNRF VANCOUVER, May 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - El Condor Minerals Inc. ("El Condor" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the analytical results from a third and final portion of the twelve-hole, 2,037 meter diamond drilling program at its Horden Lake property completed during the 2012 winter drilling program. The drilling program was designed to provide metallurgical samples for preliminary processing work and to test for expansion of resources to the...
TSXV: LCO US Symbol: ECNRF VANCOUVER, May 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - El Condor Minerals Inc. ("El Condor" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the analytical results from a second portion of the twelve-hole, 2,037 meter diamond drilling program at its Horden Lake property, completed during the 2012 winter drilling program. The drilling program was designed to provide metallurgical samples for preliminary processing work and to test for expansion of resources to the...
In December 2011, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin issued a report stating that more than 500 pieces of moon rocks, meteorites, and other debris from space were either stolen or have been missing since 1970. Now, a Houston lawyer is on a mission to identify and possibly recover many of these rare treasures. The moon rocks he is on the hunt for were brought back to Earth and then subsequently lost after being loaned to scientists, museums and agencies throughout the world. The samples...
MENLO PARK, Calif., March 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- SRI International Sarnoff's Iris on the Move® (IOM) N-Glance(TM) identification system is now protecting access to EGL USA's New York laboratory by confirming the identity of authorized employees as they enter. EGL USA, the industry leader in gemological science and service, is the first gemological laboratory to use this type of identification system for security purposes. "Security is a critical part of our business," said Mitch...
VANCOUVER, March 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - Search Minerals Inc. ("Search" or the "Company") (TSXV: SMY) and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Alterra Resources Inc., are pleased to announce the discovery of the Fox Pond and Foxy Lady rare earth element (REE)-Zr-Y-Nb prospects in the Port Hope Simpson REE District in SE Labrador. Encouraging analyses of several grab samples and channel samples from these prospects show concentrations of REE, Nb, Zr and Y equal to or greater than that of the...
A team of Dutch scientists believe that they have discovered why there are no active volcanoes on the Moon, even though recent seismic activity suggests that there is a good amount of magma below the surface. According to Olivia Solon of Wired.co.uk, Mirjam van Kan Parker and Wim van Westrenen from VU University Amsterdam and their colleagues produced microscopic copies of moon rock collected during the Apollo missions, then melted them at extremely high pressures and temperatures in order...
Unexpected new findings by a University of Maryland team of geochemists show that some portions of the Earth's mantle (the rocky layer between Earth's metallic core and crust) formed when the planet was much smaller than it is now, and that some of this early-formed mantle survived Earth's turbulent formation, including a collision with another planet-sized body that many scientists believe led to the creation of the Moon. "It is believed that Earth grew to its current size by collisions...
Latest Petrology Reference Libraries
Biotite is a common phyllosilicate mineral that contains potassium, magnesium, iron and aluminium. It is sometimes called "iron mica" and is found in granitic rocks, gneisses, and schists. Like other mica minerals, biotite has a highly perfect basal cleavage, its flexible sheets easily flaking off. It has a hardness of 2.5 - 3, a specific gravity of 2.7 - 3.1, is colored greenish to brown or black, and can be transparent to opaque. Biotite is occasionally found in large sheets, especially in...
Chert is a fine-grained silica-rich cryptocrystalline sedimentary rock that may contain small fossils. It varies greatly in color from white to black, but most often manifests as gray, brown, grayish brown and light green to rusty red; its color is an expression of trace elements present in the rock, and both red and green are most often related to traces of iron (in its oxidized and reduced forms respectively). It outcrops as nodules in limestone, chalk, and dolostone formations as a...
Chromite, iron magnesium chromium oxide: (Fe,Mg)Cr2O4, is an oxide mineral belonging to the spinel group. Magnesium is always present in variable amounts, also aluminium and iron substitute for chromium. Chromite is found in peridotite and other layered ultramafic intrusive rocks and also found in metamorphic rocks such as serpentinites. Ore deposites of chromite form as early magmatic differentiates. It is commonly associated with olivine, magnetite, serpentine, and corundum. Chromite is...
In geology, a conglomerate is a rock consisting of other stones that have been cemented together. Conglomerates are sedimentary rocks consisting of subangular clasts and are thus differentiated from breccias, which consist of angular clasts. Both conglomerates and breccias are characterized by clasts larger than sand (>2 mm). There are two varieties of conglomerate, defined by texture: paraconglomerates and orthoconglomerates. Paraconglomerates are one of two varieties of conglomerate...
Diorite is a grey to dark grey intermediate intrusive igneous rock composed principally of plagioclase feldspar (typically andesine), hornblende, and/or pyroxene. Varieties deficient in hornblende and other dark minerals are called leucodiorite. It is often described as "salt and pepper" when composed largely of light-colored minerals randomly interspersed with dark minerals. When olivine and more iron-rich augite are present, the rock grades into ferrodiorite, which is transitional to...
