Latest news with #BavarianStateOfficefortheEnvironment
NDTV
6 days ago
- Science
- NDTV
How A 75-Year-Old Letter Leads To Rare Mineral Discovery
A long-lost letter, tucked away for 75 years in a government archive, has led to the accidental rediscovery of humboldtine, an exceptionally rare mineral. The 1949 letter, unearthed during a 2023 digitisation project in Bavaria, Germany, pointed curators to a shoebox containing forgotten lemon-yellow fragments. Roland Eichhorn of the Bavarian State Office for the Environment (LfU) spearheaded the investigation. His team confirmed the fragments were indeed humboldtine, a mineral so scarce that it has been documented at only 30 locations worldwide. The discovery of these hazelnut-sized pieces instantly doubled Germany's documented reserves of the mineral. Humboldtine is an organic mineral, a unique class where carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are bound to metals within its crystal lattice. Its chemical formula combines iron with oxalate, resulting in a soft, yellow substance with a resinous sheen. The mineral's formation is a rare geological fluke, occurring when iron-rich rocks interact with specific natural acids under damp conditions. The study is published in Clays and Clay Minerals. This Bavarian trove is particularly significant, as the fragments are much larger than the typical millimetre-scale grains found elsewhere. While the exact conditions that led to their formation in brown coal remain a mystery, the find highlights the importance of historical records. Beyond its rarity, humboldtine is attracting interest from materials scientists. Its iron oxalate composition makes it efficient at shuttling electrons, suggesting potential applications in future green technologies, such as safer, high-capacity cathodes for lithium-ion batteries. The discovery underscores the value of digitising historical collections. As more archives transition to digital formats, experts anticipate further hidden gems and scientific breakthroughs from overlooked documents and specimens.
Metro
17-07-2025
- Science
- Metro
How a dusty old envelope led to discovery of one of world's rarest minerals
When Roland Eichhorn popped open the dusty cardboard box, he couldn't believe it. There, in the basement of a stuffy government office in Germany, was a pile of six yellow lumps. But these old rocks were one of the rarest minerals found on Earth. Until the discovery, only about a snowball-sized amount of the mineral, called humboldtine, had ever been found, Roland Eichhorn of the Bavarian State Office for the Environment (LfU) said. 'And we've now found a second snowball,' he told the German newspaper Welt. Humboldtine, named after the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, was first discovered in a rundown brown coal deposit in the Czech Republic in 1821. The mineral is prized highly by collectors because it has only been discovered in 30 locations across eight countries, including the UK. 'We are legally obligated to make geological collection pieces accessible to the public,' Eichhorn said. Archivists were asked last year to digitise the agency's mineral and rock catalogue stored in the LfU basement in Hof, on the banks of the Saale, in 2023. While scanning the shelves, a worker stumbled on a note written by a coal mine owner in 1949. 'Humboldtine from the Mathias mine near Schwandorf,' it read, referring to an old open-pit mine for brown coal by the river Naab. Eichhorn was taken aback, to say the least, not only because of how rare the mineral is, but because it wasn't listed anywhere in the collection. The owner of the Mathias mine likely sent in samples of the rock, but it was never documented by agency officials. Eichhorn's team immediately began rifling through more than 13,000 rocks collected across 250 years, only to discover the humboldtine stored anticlimactically in a drawer. Inside was a box labelled 'Oxalit', German for organic mineral, with the rare material inside. The dusty rock is the 'cyborg among minerals', Eichhorn said. Like all life on Earth, the mineral's crystal lattice contains carbon, water and oxygen, according to the mineral database Mindat. But what sets it apart i the iron these ingredients to life are bound to. Humboldtine only forms when iron-rich rocks contact specific acids in damp conditions, creating a lemon-yellow clump that can contain crystals. Most of humboldtine unearthed so far are only millimetre‑sized grains. But how these yellow-amber crumbs formed in the Mathias mine left Eichhorn baffled. Brown coal, also called lignite, is one of the dirtiest fossil fuels and has a low concentration of carbon. More Trending A brown coal mine isn't exactly the best conditions for humboldtine to form, yet LfU lab tests 'clearly confirmed' it was the precious crystal. Digging at the mine had closed in 1966 and was flooded with water a few decades later. Eichhorn said this makes it almost impossible for officials to investigate the site and obtain clues about where the humboldtine came from. 'Why the yellow nodules formed in the Schwandorf brown coal will probably remain a mystery forever,' the LfU said. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Here's how it could become harder for people-smugglers to reach the UK MORE: Lufthansa CEO's wife 'runs over and kills woman crossing the road' on family holiday MORE: Now I want to watch Netflix's 'ultimate grandmother of all bad movies ever made'
