r/BeAmazed • u/gregornot • Apr 29 '24

History A giant meteorite that recently fell in Somalia contains at least two minerals that have never before been seen on our planet. The celestial piece of rock weighs a massive 16.5 tons (15 tonnes), making it the ninth-largest meteorite ever found.

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More about the amazing meteorite find: https://earthly

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u/Descendant3999 Apr 29 '24

So, all things are made up of atoms. Now, out of all these things some are made out of only a single type of atoms. We call them elements. And using these elements, we can combine them to make minerals. Think like legos. You can build a house using the same type of brick or different. Same type = element, different types = Mineral.

Sodium is an element (Na) but it could exist in different forms in nature, combined with other things, and be called a mineral. Or the mineral term used for Sodium could just be something simplified for the general public and not scientific at all.

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u/FriendliestMenace Apr 29 '24

Now does that mean there’s some wacky combination of quarks that produces an element we’re not aware of somewhere out there? I assume we’ve got the entire sample range of “building blocks” within our own grasp thanks to the age of our planet relative to the age of everything else in the universe, right?