Galena gets the art vote. It’s found worldwide & has been used in paint & cosmetics by ancient peoples in Egypt, Rome & NA, in glazes & pigment for ceramics & glass & as a source for silver as well.

Perovskite being found in Brown dwarfs is very cool, but it also snows galena on Venus! #MinCup23

#Venus doesn't have much (if any) #calcite, no limestone, and little if any other carbonates.

Those carbonates instead CO2 in Venus' atmosphere -over 90 times our atmospheric pressure. This gives Venus a surface temperature of 475°C.

Poor Venus.

Calcite for a habitable planet!

#MinCup23 #SolarSystem #CosmoChemistry

September 7, 1999
walking home after work, I had just acquired these #calcite specimens when the earth started roaring. It was a 6,0 earthquake, an unforgettable minute of awe.

so, calcite it is, for personal reasons
#MinCup23
#opal vs #calcite

No equivocation here, I am #teamOpal because it's gorgeous.

Opalized deposits in petrified Douglas-fir.
https://flic.kr/p/4w3AAv

#mincup23

https://autistics.life/@zeolith/111048135636643907

For today's round of #MinCup23, I'm with team #opal. Firstly due to those flashing iridescence and then because, I'm sorry but there's no way I'm voting for the mineral that makes me decalcarize my boiling pot every single week. No #calcite today.

Vote here! https://www.mineralcup.org/2023/campaigns/round-1-match-11

An #opal I bought in Afghanistan. It's my wife's birth stone and I intended to have it mounted into a pendant necklace. It's been 15 years though...

#Mincup23

#opal, #calcite: both outstanding. Why can't they just be friends?
#mincup23 #MonDog #catsOfMastodon

Opal being found on Mars is pretty cool, but calcite getting rid of cyanobacteria in water is a thing I very much appreciate #MinCup23
https://www.mineralcup.org/2023/campaigns/round-1-match-11

Match 11 of #MinCup23 today and this will be a tough one: shiny mineraloid #opal against good, old bubbling #calcite. Opal has the looks but I prefer a crystal structure... See some fabulous examples of #calcite to convince you...

#Calcite can form very well-defined crystals but sometimes also looks a bit plain and beige. All samples from mineral exhibition at Uni Münster.

Spent long enough at sea to be firmly Team Calcite: found in shells, fossils & the lenses of trilobite eyes! Vikings used Iceland spar to polarize light & find sun on a cloudy day to navigate.

Sure opals are pretty but calcite also gets the art vote. Carved since ancient Egyptian times. #MinCup23

Calcite is crazy diverse. Just look at this 2015 Smithsonian display of JUST calcite! https://www.mineralcup.org/2023/campaigns/round-1-match-11
#MinCup23 #TeamCalcite

Almost any other matchup, I'd probably go for the arsenate, purely because arsenic-based things have such a history of being so pretty and so deadly (look into Emerald Green, or arsenic green, as a paint pigment or dye in the 1800s. Talk about A Thing!).

But listen I am just ugh enough of the head that "bird poop creates new mineral, makes science go wtf" is *funny* chaos to me. So #ammineite it is, today! #MinCup23

Mm I have been apparently Sleeping Wrong according to my neck and head (hypermobility problems 😩) so I'm slow on judging the chaos of #adamite vs #ammineite!

On the one hand, adamite is an arsenate mineral - fun, but deadly. (Also apparently a term for a certain type of nudist. 😅)

But ammineite is hella weird and neat and was the first scientifically recognized mineral of its family - and now there are Four Other ammine-based minerals, too! That's pretty chaotic, really. #MinCup23

Today Ammineite wins because it's found in guano and I like bats 🦇🦇🦇 #mincup23

OMG, I just voted and it's s a tie 😱 #MinCup23 #Adamite

#MinCup23 is amazing -I learn of new ideas lurking in the science jungle...

#Ammineite forms from bird guano interacting with copper minerals -weird.

Hydrogen would be a useful fuel in the post-fossil fuel economy, but it's tough to store. Ammonia can store much more hydrogen, but is dangerously toxic. What about storing ammonia as a solid compound?

Solids inspired by Ammineite to store hydrogen!

Kojima & Yamaguchi (2020)
Intl. J. Hydrogen Energy. doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2020.01.145.

This #MinCup23 Round 1 Match 10 is a challenge for my pro-art or geophysics voting scheme. I don’t think there’s any strong art or geophysics reasons to vote for either one.

Adamite forms as secondary mineral in the oxidized zone of zinc- & arsenic-bearing hydrothermal mineral deposits & is fluorescent. But meh.

I’m tempted to vote for the weirdo guano-mineral. 🤷‍♀️ #scicomm

I guess now is your chance to sway me. Got a more compelling reason than sometimes bird poop can cause a new mineral?

@MineralCup bahaha the miriam-webster definition popping up first thing. I see why people need to be careful. 🤣 #MinCup23

@MineralCup .... okay now you've got me curious lmfao. Sounds like I need an incognito tab for this... 🤣👀 #MinCup23

Everyone being upset by #mercury being very mercury and made of chaos is just reassuring me I definitely picked the most chaotic choice. 🤣🤣 #MinCup23