The Universe Truly IS in a Grain of Sand

          You may have noticed I've been a bit sand-obsessed since my trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado in October. Discovering these individual sand grain images magnified 250 times has blown in a fresh look at sand. The sea urchin spines in the right part of the image are particularly striking in this calcium carbonate-rich sand:

      The three-pronged sponge spicule in this image from a Maui beach is but one sand grain; "sand" is defined as a size of sedimentary particle ranging from 1/16 to 2 mm, rather than composition (I.e., quartz).

     Sand grains may also be glacially deposited as these grains of garnet, agate, epidote, quartz, magnetite, and hematite, in Lake Winnibigoshish, WI.

      Sand grains of gypsum from the White Sands area in New Mexico, are some of the most uniform in color, though they are quite soft (hardness of 2 on Moh's Hardness Scale):

      And the hydraulic fracturing sands in western and southern Wisconsin are quite uniform, hard (hardness of 7 on Moh's Hardness Scale) quartz grains:

      "Puffy stars," calcium carbonate forams on Okinawa beaches are quite uniform in size and have a distinctive shape:

     Note the rounded, smooth shells, foraminifera, piece of coral, and the volcanic fragment (in the lower right.)

     Check out these colorful, luminescent, rounded bits of foraminifera, shells, and quartz in this sand mix.

And, to tie things back to where we started this week, here are rounded, smoothed, sea urchin sand fragments from Hawai'ian sand; these are essentially cross sections of the long, green spines seen in the first image.

Take this all with a grain of calcium car- bonate or quartz or gypsum salt or. . .

Steph

There are GLOSTA lovers in Colorado!

The Unsinkable Molybdenum Brown: Atomic Number 42 (The Answer to Absolutely Everything Revealed)

     Field work on Tuesday--yeah!

      My trusty assistant, Maizie, was on the job as we hiked around and above the Henderson Molybdenum Mine near Empire, Colorado.

      The mine is surrounded by U.S Forest land of the Arapahoe National Forest.

      Yes. It is a tough job. And yes, we were happy to do it.

     Molybdenum, known informally as Moly or Molly, is a chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42. The atomic number alone is enough to endear this shiny silvery-gray (OK, it's not really brown, like Molly Brown of Titanic fame) metal to the Douglas Adams' fans of the Universe.

        The name molybdenum is derived from Neo-Latin molybdaenum, from Ancient Greek Μόλυβδος or molybdos, meaning lead. Molybdenum, the element, was discovered in 1778 by Carl Scheele. 
   
      Molybdenum does not occur naturally as a free metal on earth, but rather in various oxidation states in minerals. The free element has the 6th-highest melting point of any element and readily forms hard, stable carbides in alloys. Because of this high melting point, most of the production of molybdenum is in making steel alloys, including high strength alloys and superalloys.

         The red arrow below marks the location of the Henderson Mine buildings; the conical orangeish peak to the right is the "glory hole" which is the result of collapsing of the peak during underground mining:

     We also explored the area between the Henderson Mine and the Urad Lake reclaimed area (the surrounding vegetation appears to now be thriving after moly, uranium, and vanadium mining clean-up). We were met with a few raised eyebrows and stern looks along this road but, we persevered, in the name of science:

We saw moly slag ponds, super-secret buildings,

a boreal toad-crossing sign,

and lots of waterbars* (though our thirst was never quenched).

        

       *a ridge made across a hill road to divert rain water to one side.

        And sadly, we also saw the rocks we had to leave behind. . . 

         Here's a one-minute video from our Tuesday in the mountains, mounts, and peaks:

              Field "Work" above Timberline

         Looking for your best moly, waterbar, or glory hole stories. I heard wonderful moly, angelite (anhydrite), nephrite (jade), and other stories from rockhound Jack Sleimers of Moss Rock Shop in Chief Hosa, CO, today (Sunday, 9/13).

          A man and his moly:

All in the name of science,

Steph