In the late 1970s , a squad of researchers doing a geological study of Australia find a sort of crystal that they ’d never see before . They grabbed some and study it , and eventually named it moolooite . Then they found out it was made by bird crap .
These researchers were taking a geological view of Mooloo Downs in Australia when they found farseeing lines of quartz deposits . Quartz is pretty , but plebeian ; it happens whenever atomic number 14 - rich earth meets a pocket of oxygen . The two elements blend together into a white , shiny , semi - translucent watch crystal .
This quartz was a trivial unlike . In its crevices it had deposits of a unusual , sandy - seem turquoise crystals . Grabbing a sample distribution , they analyzed the meat and regain that it was n’t completely unlike anything they ’d ever love – just unlike anything made in nature . The basic social structure seemed to be two alternate layers of material . One stratum consisted of positively charged bull ion , while the next was a negatively charged group of some C and a lot of atomic number 8 . append just a piddling water and voila ! The combining was something like what had been synthesize in various labs , but had never been point to occur course .
The geologists searched for what kind of technology could have synthesized this in the natural state , and found only one likely candidate – fowl shit . Bird crap curb a high spirit level of phosphates , a grouping of atoms in which phosphorous is paired with a portion of O and some hydrogen . Birds perched on the quartz glass formations and did what birds do ; it collected in the crevices and somehow , due to the conditions in that part of Australia , formed rather pretty crystals that had never been formed in nature before .
Some indicate that lichen in the area might have been responsible for the moolooite , rather than the wench . We might get a opportunity to find out — it ’s potential that some moolooite has been find outside a excavation facility in France . Either Gallic birds or French lichen could give us the answer .
Top trope : Brisbane City Council
Moolooite Image : Mindat
ViaMineralogical Magazinetwice .
ChemistryGeologyScience
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