The Carbon Mineral Challenge is a citizen science project dedicated to accelerating the discovery of carbon-bearing minerals. The program launched in 2015 with sponsorship from the Deep Carbon Observatory. The project will end after 2019.
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Background
Mineralogist Robert Hazen and his colleagues pioneered the concept of mineral evolution to explain how life and geology have intertwined throughout Earth’s multi-billion year past. As part of that research, the group developed a model that combines the locations and distributions of known minerals to predict the number of unknown carbon minerals on Earth. The method is similar to statistical methods used in biology. Hazen and his group predicted that 145 carbon minerals remain undiscovered on Earth.
A paper supporting the research, "Carbon Mineral Ecology," was published by American Mineralogist in 2015, and the Carbon Mineral Challenge was announced in 2015 at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting meeting in San Francisco. Geochemist Daniel Hummer (Southern Illinois University) is the project lead.
Carbon is the focus of the project due to the element's importance to life on Earth and how little is known about it.
How the Project Works
To register a new carbon mineral with the project, mineralogists are asked to adhere to the protocol outlined by the International Mineralogical Association Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification. Once a carbon mineral is approved by that body, the team responsible for the mineral's discovery submits their finding via a form on the project's website. As of December 2015 there were 405 known and catalogued carbon minerals.
The project focuses both on new discoveries in the field and analyses of samples in already in storage in museums and other institutions. Eight new carbon minerals have been described since the project's launch. While two minerals, abellaite and parasite-(la), have chemistry that was predicted by the research team, there have been some unexpected finds, including the mineral leószilárdite, a uranyl carbonate, and tinnunculite which is an organic mineral .
The mineral analysis by Hazen and his colleagues provides some clues about promising locations to look for new carbon minerals and predicts their chemical makeup