Vermiculitis
The tale of the Great Snake in the workshop interpretation of Pavel Bazhov, other mentions of a huge snake, allegedly indicating a gold deposit, are based on the superstitions of the ancient Khanty and Mansi, Ural legends and omens of mountaineers and miners. The belief of local residents that a wondrous treasure is hidden in the mountain, but some otherworldly forces are guarding it, is what served as the folklore basis for the wonderful Bazhov's tales.
But there is also a scientific explanation for the existence of the Great Snake. The mineral vermiculite is a scaly clayey mica of golden yellow or bronze yellow color, which is quite widespread in the Urals and Siberia. Vermiculite has an interesting property: it swells up strongly when heated.
Pieces of vermiculite put into the fire, swelling up, resemble golden Christmas balls, surprisingly beautiful and light. Unfortunately, heated vermiculite is not resistant - a light touch or even a gust of wind is enough, and the ball crumbles into tiny flakes, literally turning into dust.
Lamellar vermiculite sometimes, in the process of swelling, takes the shape of not a ball, but a large (20-30 times more than before heating) wriggling column (worm, snake). A slight crackling sound is heard during this process. Now let’s imagine how a Mansi hunter, sitting in a remote Siberian taiga near a campfire, sees: a huge snake crawls out of the fire, wriggling, with a crash.
Here, probably, a modern tourist would feel uneasy. And if later, not far from this terrible place, placer or native gold was found (and, as you know, it is found in Siberia and the Urals), then, most likely, this fact was overgrown with legends and superstitions.
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POISONOUS FILM
At the beginning of the 19th century, a young Russian artist died in the Aktash tract in Gorny Altai under unclear circumstances. Delusional, incoherent speech, convulsions, epileptic seizures - these are the symptoms of the disease that preceded death. The mouth of the deceased was of a strange copper-red color …
The paintings that remained after the artist's death suggested a serious mental illness of their creator. The opinion of the mountaineers, local residents, was unanimous: the deceased visited a place forbidden for mortals - the Lake of Mountain Spirits. And the spirits took revenge on the daredevil.
A hundred years later, these lands were visited by a remarkable geologist, paleontologist, ethnographer and writer Ivan Efremov. He learned about the death of the artist and about the spirits, the forces of evil, guarding the lake. Then the young writer carefully studied all these messages, in fact, already legends of the past century, and then embarked on a trip to the forbidden area. Soon, Efremov published a short story about this lake and the tragically dead artist. The story came out in a collection dedicated to adventure and fantasy, and therefore was not taken seriously by experts. But in vain.
In the area of the Aktash depression, powerful thermal phenomena are observed, and the rocks themselves consist of the mineral cinnabar. Cinnabar, a frightening red mineral, contains up to 86% mercury. Warmed by the summer sun from above, hot springs from below, the cinnabar begins to give off mercury in the form of vapor (in chemistry, this phenomenon is called sublimation).
Then the mercury vapor condenses and settles in spots of a heavy silver-lead color. The accumulation of these spots was mistaken for the mysterious lake of Mountain Spirits. Everything else is the toxic effect of mercury vapor on the human body.
In the Middle Ages and in the late 1700s, being sent to work in Spanish mines containing cinnabar formations was considered almost a death sentence. Cinnabar has been widely used in Chinese history to make ornamental food dishes, and bizarre carvings have also been made from its pieces, sometimes at the expense of the lives of artisans. Even more incredible, some of the ancient doctors believed that cinnabar contained medicinal properties and prescribed it to treat certain diseases.
OIL … IN STONE
Geodes - crystalline nodules-minerals with a cavity in the center - are highly prized by stone gatherers, as they often contain rather beautiful formations.
But whatever crystals are found in the cores of gray geodes, they are overshadowed by a second component: fetid balls of crude oil and tar. Oil geodes, of course, have no economic value. But on the other hand, they baffle geologists who are not yet able to explain this mineralogical phenomenon.
Geodes are formed by minerals that crystallize in closed rock cavities. They grow inward, and their hollow core is believed to be hermetically sealed from the environment. Oil and tar, for their part, are formed from organic matter at high pressures and temperatures.
But, as geology teaches, these two processes do not occur simultaneously. But, nevertheless, geodes still exist. It was they who, according to scientists, collected and enclosed oil from the environment.
FLEXIBLE STONES
Although stones are usually considered a symbol of unbending hardness, some rocks are nonetheless so malleable that a thin strip cut from them bends under its own weight.
The most common of these stones is a specific type of sandstone called itacolumite. Its name comes from Italokumi, a mountain in Brazil where this stone is found in large quantities. It is also found in the Ural Mountains and in India.
It is believed that the stones sag due to the cavities between the sand grains. It is this structure that allows italocumite to exhibit a special flexibility that is not characteristic of most stones.
CRYSTAL CROSSES
A stone cross growing from the ground was noticed by the population of the Belarusian city of Turov a long time ago. When exactly - no one remembers. First, we noticed a small cobblestone, tried to lift it, but could not. They left the stone alone. A few years later, it was discovered that it had risen several centimeters above the ground and had a cross, unusual for a simple field stone.
Of course, the amazing stone attracted the attention of Orthodox people, who saw a supernatural sign in it. And soon Borisovoglebskoe cemetery became a place of pilgrimage.
However, there is nothing unusual in the Turov stone. The fact is that the opaque, reddish mineral staurolite takes on the shape of a cross. And if it were not for the tendency of the crystals of this mineral to take on a cruciform shape, it would hardly have been noticed by non-specialists.
Similar stones are found in many places. And wherever they were found, legends followed them everywhere. So, in the northwest of France, they say that these stones fell from heaven. In the US state of Virginia, they are called magic stones.
The name of the mineral comes from the Greek word "stavros", that is - "cross".
JEWISH STONE
In the century before last, in the Urals, in the Ilmen mountains, one of the scientists discovered a mysterious stone. On a comparatively smooth slab, the size of a plate, he saw mysterious writing. The inscription on the stone was remarkably similar to the Hebrew. Individual letters were easily guessed. They could even be folded into syllables.
Did Jews inhabited the Urals in the distant past? Science has established with indisputable accuracy that the Hebrew tribes inhabited Syria, Babylon and other regions of the Middle East. It seemed to scientists that they had made the greatest discovery. Only, however, it was not possible to decipher the inscription on the stone. Some of the squiggles looked like letters, and most of them didn't look like anything.
The news of the discovery of scientists in the Urals became known to many. Attempts to decipher the mysterious letters did not stop, although they did not give the desired result.
But then another miracle happened: stones with "Hebrew" inscriptions in the Urals were found many, very many. On some, these inscriptions were in large print, on others - surprisingly small, beaded handwriting. But neither one nor the other could be deciphered.
Chemical scientists examined the stones in the laboratory. It was granite in composition. The stone began to be called "written granite" (scientific name is graphic pegmatite) because of the clear inscriptions on it. They also call it a Jewish stone, since it seems to everyone that the writings on it are of Hebrew origin.
The answer to the written granite was given not by philologists or chemists, but by mineralogists. Academician Alexander Evgenievich Fersman studied the strange stone very carefully. He, like other scientists, was initially struck by the fact that mysterious inscriptions were applied not only to the surface of the stone, but also go deep into it. And if the written granite is cut, then the letters will be equally well visible both on the upper and lower sides.
To learn the secret of written granite, it was necessary to delve not only into those distant times when the Hebrew tribes lived, but also those prehistoric times when the earth was formed and when molten magma pierced the earth's thickness here and there.
It was then that, probably, quartz played its joke. It penetrated into the mass of light and greenish feldspar in millions of thin dark gray streams and froze together with the spar. If you now cut the written granite along the solidified streams of gray quartz, these streams will look like sticks as thick as a match or a pencil. And with a transverse fracture, the streams of quartz look like the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And what is surprising: often these letters go in straight lines, as if indeed they were drawn by a human hand!
The mystery of quartz has been solved. But even now people look with unflagging curiosity at the amazing "writing" of the so-called Jewish stone.
PERLITE - FLOATING STONE
It turns out that there are stones in nature that do not sink in water. It is perlite, a heavy volcanic glass. But it acquires its unusual properties after it is calcified in a fire. After that, it becomes like a loose gray mass, reminiscent of frozen foam.
The word "pearl" means pearl. Perlite really looks like pearls. Its color is gray-gray with a small silvery shade.
They find this stone where volcanoes have been active for a long time. It was the red-hot lava of volcanoes that melted the sand lying on the surface into huge blocks. In Buryatia, for example, a layer of perlite 30 meters thick was found. This layer of "pearl stone" is shallow, but stretches for tens of kilometers. The hot lava of a long-extinct volcano spread so widely here.
Of course, it is curious to throw a piece of perlite into the fire and watch how it begins to crack and swell from heating, like dough. Perlite increases in volume from intense heat ten to fifteen times. Pieces of it really become so light that they don't sink.
TIME MINERALS
Sometimes you can see an amazing sight in the deserts. This is how the famous Soviet scientist, academician A. E. Fersman, describes it:
“Here, in the wild conditions of the Karakum desert, I had to meet with an absolutely fantastic appearance of salts. After a heavy night rain, in the morning, the clay surfaces of the blinders are unexpectedly covered with a continuous snow cover of salts - they grow in the form of twigs, needles and films, rustle underfoot … But this only lasts until noon, - a hot desert wind rises, and its gusts wave for several hours of salt flowers.
However, the most remarkable stone flowers appear in the polar regions. Let us turn to AE Fersman again.
“Here, during six cold months,” writes the academician, “mineralogist P. L. Dravert observed remarkable formations in the salt brines of Yakutia. In cold salt springs, the temperature of which dropped 25 degrees below zero, large hexagonal crystals of the rare mineral hydrohalite appeared on the walls. By the spring, they crumbled into a powder of simple table salt, and by winter they began to grow again."
It turns out that there are minerals in nature that can change their appearance in just one year. They are called periodic.
MOSS MINERALS
Sometimes, when splitting layered rocks, mineralogists find special formations in them, called dendrites for their external resemblance to plants. They are a collection of the finest and most delicate twigs: yellow, red or black. Often they come in several tones at the same time, and grow as if from one root.
Copper dendrites
This special type of mineral is formed either in very narrow cracks between two layers of rock, or in a not yet completely fossilized medium of a jelly-like substance, into which ferrous solutions have fallen.
In the famous "moss agates" of India, such twigs of green, brown and red substances form whole complex and intricate forests, thickets of grasses, bushes, trees. Now we know that they were formed because the agate substance once, when the molten lavas of India solidified, represented a liquid mass, in which these dendrites grew.