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Life helps make almost half of Earth’s minerals
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zeristor 4y agoShame the paper itself is behind a paywall.
- kzrdude 4y agoWhen they say “half” they mean half of the kinds. It's not like half of the weight of the minerals on earth.
- pigeons 4y agohttps://v2.nl/publishing/tiny-mining-a-handbook-for-internal-extraction https://v2.nl/publishing/tiny-mining-a-handbook-for-internal...
- dr_dshiv 4y agoMany aquagenic minerals are so close to being life themselves. We have way more mineral species on earth than on non-water bearing planets.
- tgv 4y agoCan you give an example or a link? When I search for "aquagenic minerals," I find absolutely nothing like what I infer to be "minerals that generate water."
- thaumasiotes 4y agoIt's possible that "aquagenic minerals" means "minerals that are created in water"; it would be weird for minerals to generate water.
- heavyset_go 4y agoI'm imagining they mean mineral hydrates but maybe I'm wrong.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoIt might be a neologism but im using it in the sense of biogenic and abiogenic mineral creation.
- heavyset_go 4y agoMaybe, your IFL Science link is talking about mineral hydrates.
- dr_dshiv 4y agohttps://www.iflscience.com/catalog-of-every-known-mineral-on-earth-reveals-the-roles-of-water-and-life-64283 https://www.iflscience.com/catalog-of-every-known-mineral-on... 6000 minerals and over 10,000 mineral kinds, 80% of which result from water-based production processes (what I’m referring to as aquagenic formation). Not sure the proper term, sorry for the confusion.