There is no doubt that people have had a great influence on planet Earth, especially due to the global development of civilization. Now scientists have described an explosion of newly formed minerals created as a direct result of our influence on the chemical composition of the planet.
The appearance of crystals
“This spike in the formation of new minerals is overwhelming. Most of the crystals have been created in the past 200 years. This process is short in comparison with the history of the Earth, which is 4.5 billion years old. In the history of the Earth, we will not find anything like it,”research team member Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institute of Science told The Guardian. "It's just a blink of an eye, it's just a splash, and of course we only see the tip of the iceberg of the process."
It's easy enough to understand that all minerals are created by humans. We have substances such as glass, aluminum, oil, plastic, gold, copper, silver, and more, and people extract them to create various everyday things. Therefore, it makes sense that these materials will lead to the creation of new minerals.
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Study of minerals
Hazen and his team studied 5208 minerals that exist on Earth. These minerals have been officially recognized by the International Mineralogical Association. It was also found that 208 of them exist only due to human activity. Most of the 208 minerals were formed during the extraction of other materials.
Waste Minerals
Some new types of minerals can come from our waste, such as old batteries and electrical appliances.
“There are probably all sorts of substances that come from altering old silicon chips or batteries,” Hazen told New Scientist. “TVs have all these exotic phosphors, magnets and all kinds of high-tech materials. As you begin to moisturize and oxidize them, you will begin to find many exotic new materials."
The formation of new minerals corresponds to a new geological era. The era of the Anthropocene determines the influence of mankind on geological processes. While this is widely debated among experts, the main point is that the emergence of new minerals began during the testing of atomic weapons in the 1940s, when the planet was choked with plutonium after bomb explosions.
Oxygenation
Most of the 5,225 minerals listed by the International Mineral Association were the result of the largest oxygenation process that took place 2.3 billion years ago. The process consisted in the fact that the oxygen level, which was practically zero, spontaneously increased due to the activity of photosynthetic cyanobacteria. It is believed that this caused the emergence of new aerobic organisms, which ultimately contributed to the creation of conditions for the existence of the human body.
“To put it simply, we are living in an era of unprecedented inorganic complex diversification. Indeed, if the great oxidation in the past was the starting point in the history of the Earth, then the rapid and extensive geological impact of the Anthropocene should be considered an exclamation mark,”explained Hazen in a press release.
This new study provides even more evidence of just how much humans have influenced the planet.
“If you are a geologist who returned 100,000 years later, a million or a billion years to Earth, then you will find amazing mineralogical evidence of a completely different time,” Hazen told The Washington Post. - The Anthropocene can be perceived as a new geological period of time. Humanity has created all these crystals that are incredibly diverse and beautiful, and they will last for billions of years."
Maya Muzashvili
