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Kyawthuite is so rare it's only ever been found once
- ginko 2y ago>There, mineralogists were able to relate the stone to synthetic BiSbO4 – bismuth antimonate – though with the formula Bi3+Sb5+O4, an arrangement never before found in nature. How do they know it's not a synthetic stone to begin with?
- loa_in_ 2y agoThey assume that as there seem to be no production for this kind of material happening within the sphere of man made industry, anything found must be natural.
- bartread 2y agoNo, that’s not correct: there are tubular inclusions in the gem that are a sign of shear stress, which indicates toward natural formation.
- gus_massa 2y agoIs anyone producing it artificialy? It's a strange combination of oxides. You probably have to mix them, heat them a lot and use a lot of pressure, just to get pitty tiny cristals if you are lucky. In Wikipedia, I don't see any industrial application that can pay for tweaking the procces for years to get nice gems.
- v3ss0n 2y agoI am from Myanmar and I am sure we didn't have technology to do that. We only have like 3 hrs a day of power and 24/7 full on war festival in WJ40k style factions waging war against the Chaos lord Min Aung Hlaing. We don't have infrastructure or technology, our technology now falling back to WW1 era
- onlypassingthru 2y agoUnless it's the byproduct of some other valuable process, why would anyone go to the expense and trouble of figuring out how to make it?
- iamhamm 2y ago“It also has hollow, tube-shaped inclusions called en echelon veins that are caused by shear stress – evidence of its natural formation.”
- crazygringo 2y agoThanks. They put that sentence in a weird place, I had missed it too and had the same question.
- echelon 2y agoAre there predictive models or novel techniques such as interferometry that allow us to make better guesses where minerals and other natural resources might be located? I've been hearing about startups driving around trying to detect gravitational distortions, or using satellite data. Are we getting better at this? Is there a lot of opportunity in the space for new methods and approaches?
- ReptileMan 2y agoI guess LLM will be amazing with proper training from scratch since they are amazing with paterns and discovering paterns
- lukan 2y agoA variant of stable diffusion maybe. Not large language models.
- Duckyroad 2y agoAren't LLMs and stable diffusion both generators? The are designed to generate a complex response to a simple prompt. If you want to identify potential natural resource deposits, that's good old data science with some machine learning. You feed them a bunch of data and out comes a simple map with probabilities. I suspect the relevant mining companies already have analysts who are doing everything they can to find deposits. No need for revolutionary startups.
- indigodaddy 2y agoWho actually owns the stone currently? Did Kyaw Thu give it to National History Museum of Los Angeles County, or is it only housed there whilst Kyaw Thu still the owner?
- mjlee 2y agoKyaw Thu is the given name. Burmese names don't use surnames/family names.
- indigodaddy 2y agoAh, interesting thank you.
- dhosek 2y agoI wonder if this is the last country to not use family names. Thailand’s use of family names began in the 20th century, if I recall correctly.
- kseistrup 2y agoMany Ugandans have two given names and no family name. And I know at least two Indonesians who only have a single name.
- Deukhoofd 2y agoIceland comes to mind, where patronyms and matronyms are still the standard.
- samatman 2y agoI would consider all of surnames, patronyms, and matronyms, to be "family names" in the broad sense. They're based on who your family is, after all.
- withinboredom 2y agoWow. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... That isn’t how names work.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- barrettondricka 2y agoRanking minerals by "most rare" is stupid. They simply don't have enough data. > you might mistaken it for amber or topaz I suspect that there are dozens of other extremely rare minerals out there that have not yet been found or mistaken for different ones. Correctly estimating their relative abundance is impossible and pointless as the rarest will be single cases. In fact, the rarest mineral ever has likely not been discovered yet. I bet there is some famous math/statistics problem about this kind of situation. And I wonder if any rare minerals have been classified by governments (or individuals) for whatever reasons. (Probably yes)
- andrewflnr 2y agoAs with most pronouncements like this, you just have to mentally append "(known so far)" to the end and it will make sense. That's the implicit context for almost all of them. We can only say what we know, so far. For the reasons you stated, I don't think anyone actually thinks they know the absolute rarest mineral on earth.
- HankB99 2y ago> currently housed safely at the National History Museum of Los Angeles County. I see that as a lead in to a heist movie. Aside from that... I wonder if there are other samples of this material yet to be found. Also, is it the only one known because it's the only one that's been properly identified?
- mrandish 2y agoI'm no mineral expert but there's enough info in the TFA to suspect it's rare because no one is mining it or even looking for it. Apparently, it's very difficult to recognize in its natural form and easy to mistake for other less valuable minerals without lab testing. It's just hard for me to imagine the natural processes that formed this grain of it didn't form a lot more of it in the region where it was found.
- ocdtrekkie 2y agoI would have to imagine if they find it particularly interesting it will be justified to go look for more, so it probably will not be the rarest gem for long.
- Rastonbury 2y agoThe place where it was found was also where the find most of the now 2nd rarest gem Painite, supposed there are only 300 specimens found. So I'm sure miners and scientists are hunting there, especially since these gems goes for prices similar that of diamonds
- facialwipe 2y agoAccording to Warren Buffet, all of the world’s mined gold would only form a 67 sq ft cube.
- rich_sasha 2y agoI think not quite; below link says a cube 22x22x22 m, which is about 67ft. But thats length side. Actual volume is just over 300k cubic feet, or in real units, 10,000 cubic meters. https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/how-much-gold https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/how-much-gold
- amelius 2y agoOr about 4.26 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
- yapyap 2y agoThe rarest mineral is so rare it hasn’t been found yet
- jbverschoor 2y agoAs Dick Dastardly said: I’m so sneaky, I can’t even trust myself!
- ada1981 2y ago>>The world's only known piece of kyawthuite is currently housed safely at the National History Museum of Los Angeles County.<< A shame that it’s not housed in a museum of its native origin.
- throwaway2562 2y agoWhy is it a shame exactly?
- ada1981 2y agoHave you been to LA?
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoDo you know any good museums in Myanmar worth visiting?
- ilya_m 2y ago[flagged]
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoHave you heard what’s happening in Myanmar? Does the term „military junta” ring a bell? Myanmar isn’t exactly a place where people fly to, have a breakfast at the hotel patio, then go around town contemplating museums an popping down a random Starbucks.
- ilya_m 2y agoIs having a stable, democratically elected government a requirement for permitting a nation to keep its heritage? What about having Starbucks on every corner - is this necessary or just optional? Greece or Egypt had their share of occupations, coup d'etats, and military juntas over the last 200 years. Does it mean that there's an open season on their treasures each time there's a regime change? Oh wait...
- whatio 2y ago“Rare” is being used in the same sense as “rare earth elements,” not in the typical, common usage of rare. The “rare” part comes from: 1. They rarely form concentrated ore deposits, instead being widely dispersed throughout rock formations 2. The elements are very chemically similar to each other, making them difficult and expensive to separate and purify for industrial use
- _2d30 2y ago[flagged]
- MiguelX413 2y agoOr the headline
- dang 2y agoPlease make your substantive points without breaking the site guidelines. Your comment would be fine with just the second sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deadbabe 2y agoProbably because it’s just a useless rock?
- abeppu 2y agoI'm a little surprised there isn't a giant k-way tie for minerals that have only been found once. Like, I get that minerals arise from natural processes, and it's a big planet, so maybe every process should have a potential to occur more than once and perhaps in more than one place -- but many kinds of natural processes create a long-tail distribution where there's a huge number of very rare things.
- MichaelZuo 2y agoWhat if they have been found, but just not announced?
- dang 2y agoSee also https://web.archive.org/web/20160712224355/http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/21307-world-s-rarest-gem-named-after-myanmar-mineralogist.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160712224355/http://www.mmtime... (linked from the article)
- EGreg 2y agoHow about Cummingtonite? They say it's commonly found, but it was named after Cummington (I found out about it by watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya_D9IwB3-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya_D9IwB3-s)
- nkurz 2y agoDid you link the right video? This is an old Onion video about a NASA mission. Was it in there somewhere?
- EGreg 2y ago"Her eyes are the color of magnesium iron silicate" The writers are the Onion were probably keeping that joke in reserve for a while LOL
- nkurz 2y agoHmm. I heard that, but didn't put it together. Magnesium Iron Silicate is Olivine. It has a very distinctive olive-green color: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivine. Cummingtonite is Magnesium Iron Silicate Hydroxide. It's not a plausible eye-color: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cummingtonite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cummingtonite. I guess it's possible they were making this joke and flubbed it by leaving out a word? (I looked it up because I live near Cummington MA, which it's named after)
- EGreg 2y agoI imagine they had to have been making the joke, because 1) it would otherwise be too random of a reference and 2) the youtubers all picked up on it lol