“It’s called kyawthuite (cha-too-ite), a tiny, tawny-hued grain weighing just a third of a gram (1.61 carats). On first glance, you might mistaken it for amber or topaz; but the unassuming mineral speck has value beyond measure.”

  • Flying Squid
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    1133 months ago

    “This is the rarest mineral in the world. Let’s cut off bits to make facets.”

    People are so fucking weird.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      1503 months ago

      He didn’t know until after it was faceted…

      “thought the raw gem was a mineral called scheelite. After he faceted the stone, though, he realized that he was looking at something unusual.”

          • Flying Squid
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            243 months ago

            I was in on it early, so I have no excuse other than I need to read more carefully next time. Which I probably won’t remember to do next time.

            • @RamblingPanda
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              153 months ago

              Can someone tldr the whole thing? I’m too lazy to read the title, comments or article.

              (No please don’t, I read it, I’m just here for cheap jokes and giggles)

              • @[email protected]OP
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                183 months ago

                Guy found an interesting rock in a gemstone market in Myanmar, thought it was one thing, made it pretty, found out not only was it something else, it was something never before seen in nature.

                Naturally, now it lives in Los Angeles.

              • Zier
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                113 months ago

                tldr, there was a man from Nantucket…

              • Flying Squid
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                43 months ago

                I only read the above comment up to ‘tldr’ and skimmed the rest so the tldr is that the world’s rarest mineral is so rare that it’s only ever been found once!

            • @[email protected]
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              33 months ago

              It’s all good, if you didn’t get it wronf, none would have corrected you and 99/100 that didn’t read the story wouldn’t know. You provided us 35 seconds of insight second hand.

      • @[email protected]
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        33 months ago

        Like the guy who cut down the oldest know tree to find out how old it was. It wasn’t known how old it was at the time. (They have found probably older but don’t want to cut them down to find out.)

      • Flying Squid
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        43 months ago

        You caught me. I’m a terrible lying liar who only says things like this to impress people on the internet by making them think I did something stupid instead of something else stupid. It’s all part of my fiendish plan to make people think I’m an idiot. You found me out. Curses!

  • @[email protected]
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    173 months ago

    So this mineral was found in the Mogok region of Myanmar, and the second rarest mineral, painite, was also found in the Mogok region of Myanmar. It sounds like there’s something funky going on there geologically speaking, and it’s probably not a coincidence that the country had been mostly closed off from the rest of the world for decades.

  • @[email protected]
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    93 months ago

    Gemological Institute of America (GIA) Laboratory in Bangkok, Thailand

    These gemologists seem graphologically confused

    • @[email protected]OP
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      243 months ago

      FTA:

      “mineralogists were able to relate the stone to synthetic BiSbO4 – bismuth antimonate – though with the formula Bi3+Sb5+O4, an arrangement never before found in nature.”

      So we’ve already KINDA done it, just with less Bi+Sb.

    • @[email protected]
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      203 months ago

      It’s the only known natural occurrence of a mineral that (as it happens) has also been synthesized. Many minerals are available as exact synthetics. Diamond is an example.

    • Skua
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      113 months ago

      It seems like we don’t know how it was made in nature, so probably not. We can’t replicate the process until we figure out what it is

    • @[email protected]
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, it’s pretty nice actually. Cool gardens, gem room, lots of dino and evolution stuff… Not as big as the AMNH in Manhattan, but they did a good job with their smaller space.