MSA ROEBLING MEDAL LECTURE: FROM EARTH TO DEEP SPACE–A HALF CENTURY (ALMOST) OF NANOMINERALOGY

Observations and measurements on the nanoscale have fundamentally changed our understanding of mineral reactions, processes, and histories. Parallel to the emerging field of mineral evolution, we introduce mineral psychology, where close examination reveals examples of minerals that range from well-adjusted through moderately confused to positively schizophrenic. Happily, the “deviants” can provide new geological insights. Most case studies to be presented are of silicates, but carbon also provides compositionally simple mineralogical materials that are remarkably complex when examined in detail. Carbon’s ability to form single and multiple bonds with itself, including in linear and cyclic arrays, allows nearly endless structural possibilities. Examples include products of low-grade metamorphism (graphitic stuff), high-velocity impact (diamond/lonsdaleite), and wildfire emissions (atmospheric tar balls), as well as fullerenes, meteoritic species and, we speculate, new forms that we call pseudocarbynes. It is not yet known whether they exist as minerals, but we suggest that pseudocarbynes occur in and may answer fundamental questions about organic reactions and magnetic fields in the interstellar medium.