The most abundant mineral in the world was so far inside the Earth that you probably
never heard of it.
They should have called it hipsterite.
The Earth's most abundant mineral was discovered in 1879, and until THIS YEAR it didn't have
a name.
What did they call it before now?
All the things?
That stuff?
Hey you!
Yeah, all-ah you!
Nah, they called it silicate-perovskite… which is kind of a mouthful.
So, this week, after 135 years of unnecessary complication, the mineral has a name -- bridgmanite.
If that's anticlimactic for you, I can see why.
Here’s why it took so long to get the name: just because a geologist discovers something
like silicate-perovskite, doesn't mean it's a material!
See, in 1879, a meteor shower allowed a number of rocks to fall from space onto Australia
and on that meteorite they found something called a silicate-perovskite crystal.
The substance is a magnesium-iron (or calcium) silicate, which follows a perovskite crystal
pattern.
It looks like a cube, but it’s made of two positively charged elements held together
by a third negatively charged one.[a]
Bridgmanite is thought to make up about 38 percent of the WHOLE PLANET by volume, BUT
it can ONLY exist at high temperatures and pressures.
Where on the planet can you get that cocktail of mineral goodness?
In the mantle!
The 25 mile thick (32 km) crust of the Earth floats on the upper mantle, and the lower
mantle, where temperatures can reach 5000 degrees Celsius and pressures can reach 1.4
million times the pressure at sea level - that contains the bridgemanite.
The big deal is, we've never PROVED that's what it was.
Scientists have done experiments that showed the mantle was made of bridgmanite, but they
couldn't perfectly confirm what they were seeing.
Bridgmanite only appeared in the lab, or on meteorites which had been in high-energy collisions
which mimicked the pressure and temperature found at the center of a planet!
[[breathe]] Which, as you might imagine, is a fairly rare find.
Normally, proof lies in the pudding, right?
Scientists had never found a naturally occurring sample that they could prove, without a doubt,
was bridgemanite!
See, when you put bridgemanite into an electron microscope, it turns into glass…
So they get a sample, pop it into an electron microscope to probe its nanostructure… but
the electron beams would react with the bridgemanite and turn it to glass!!!
I KNOW!!
So, they came up with a new way… a synchrotron, which sounds like an awesomely 80s carnival
ride, but it's actually a kind of particle accelerator which uses high-energy X-rays.
Finally, 135 years after its discovery, they could prove what they were seeing was silicate-perovskite
and the International Mineralogical Association was all like, okay, NOW you can name it.
Which is pretty frickin' amazing when you get right down to it.
It was so exciting for the scientists, they published their findings in the November issue
of the journal Science.
Of course, they called it bridgemanite after the inventor of high-pressure crystallography,
Percy Bridgeman.
I mean, they could have called it hipsterite because it's so underground, but whatever
dudes.
It's your rock.
If you're like me, you're wondering what a century of studying this silicate-perovskite
thingy was all for!
Well, the meteorite formed 4.5 billion years ago, around the same time as Earth.
That gives scientists a better understanding of what THAT was like, as well as what's happening
in the innermost regions of the Earth!
So while you and me might not get much from Bridgemanite, you'll know its name now.
And that's something for bar trivia, for sure.
What would YOU have named an ancient crystalline mineral that makes up a third
of the Earth?
It's everywhereite?