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Superman’s Kryptonite Found in Serbian Mine
Superman’s Kryptonite Found in Serbian Mine
In the film Superman Returns, kryptonite is described
as having the chemical formula sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide. A new mineral with the same chemistry is recently identified by scientists from Natural History Museum in London, England and Canada’s National Research Council. The mineral found in a Serbian mine, will formally be named Jadarite in the latter part of 2007.
Unlike the large green crystals of Superman’s Kryptonite, the new mineral is white, powdery, and not radioactive. The discovery is credited to a group of geologists and mineralogists from the Rio Tinto mining group, one of the world’s largest mining group companies headquartered in London, England, and Melbourne, Australia. The group enlisted the help of Dr. Chris Stanley, a mineralogist at London’s Natural History Museum to identify the unusual mineral.
Every year, about 30 to 40 mineral species are discovered. For a mineral to be classified a new, it must undergo a battery of test, focusing on its crystal structure.
Dr. Yvon Le Page, an expert in the field of crystallography at Canada’s National Research Council, said, Being able to analyze all the properties of a mineral, both chemical and physical, brings us closer to confirming that it is indeed unique.
According to Dr. Stanley, finding out that the chemical composition of a material is an exact match to an invented formula for the fictitious kryptonite, was the coincidence of a lifetime.
Jadarite is named after Jadar, the name of the place where the Serbian mine is located. It can not be called kryptonite under international nomenclature rules, because it has nothing to do with a real element in the Periodic Table that takes the form of a gas krypton.
Jadarite is relatively hard but is very small grained. Each individual crystal is less than five microns (millionths of a meter) across.
Published: February 23, 2008
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