Scientists discover entirely new mineral hiding out in South Africa

We generally have a pretty solid grasp of what kinds of materials exist in Earth's crust, but despite centuries of study, sometimes our planet throws researchers a curveball. For one Ph.D. student from the University of Alberta, that curveball took the form of a never-before-seen mineral tucked away inside a diamond at a volcanic site in South Africa. Nicole Meyer and a team of researchers were the first to identify the mineral now known as Goldschmidtite, a strange combination of elements that ...