When citizenry want to possess something unique it ordinarily has to be human - made , not a piece of music of the Earth . After all , we live on a large major planet , and if geologic force produce a finicky mineral in one touch , there ’s a pretty good chance they will make it somewhere else as well . Indeed , of the 6,000 minerals recognize by the International Mineralogical Association many are form bymultiple cognitive operation , with quite different chemistry top to identical outcomes .
Even if a mineral did only form once , samples could easy be broken up and dispersed over a wide area . therefore , it ’s somewhat remarkable any mineral would be known from just a single sample . However , that ’s the example for one crystal , kyawthuite .
Kyawthuite has only been found in the human body of a single stone from near Mogok , Myanmar and was recognized by the International Mineralogical Association in 2015 . An almost monovular celluloid chemical compound was already known , so if you badly need some , you do n’t need to steal the single specimen from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County , whereit is stored .
Kyawthuite is a gauzy reddish - orangeness and the single specimen weighs 1.61 carats ( 0.3 Gram ) . The chemical formula is Bi3+Sb5+O4 , with touch of tantalum . Both Bi and antimony ( yes Sb is the chemic symbolization for antimony because why make things well-situated ) are rare metals , but not extraordinarily so . There’smore bismuthin the Earth ’s crust than gold , while Sb is more abundant than silver . Oxygen is the crust ’s most abundant element , so Kyawthuite ’s oddity must relate to the method by which it form , rather than a shortage of its factor .
Bismuth is such a clayey element the denseness of kyawthuite is more than eight clip that of water ( and threefold that of the ruby it slightly resemble ) , so the stone is even small than its weight would suggest . Caltech’smineral databasedescribes the social system as take in checkerboard sheets of octahedron Sb5+O6parallel to Bi3+atoms . It is the only recognized bismuth - antimony oxide and is name after Dr Kyaw Thu , formerly a geologist at Yangon University .
The kyawthuite specimen was found in the seam of a flow by sapphire hunting watch and approve by the IMA in 2015 as a distinctive mineral . Its scientific descriptionwas publishedin 2017 .
Interestingly , Myanmar is also the source of the second rarest mineral , painstone , a gemstone with only a handful recorded . Speaking toLiveScience , CaltechProfessor George Rossmanattributed the abundance of gemstones in Myanmar to the pressure and heat produced when India clash with Asia . Although consume so many type of jewel order Myanmar in the running to have the two rarest minerals , decennium of war and outside endorsement make it likely a lot of examples of each are not reaching scientists .
