A detailed look at rocks and minerals, the essential building blocks of Earth’s crust. Rocks are naturally occurring solids ...

A little knowledge of rocks and minerals will help you identify everything from jewelry to fossils. While reading this article may not turn you into a geologist, it should give you the basic ...

Take an in-depth look at minerals, the natural substances that make up the very foundation of our planet. Minerals are not ...

How to Identify Rocks and Other Questions From Our Readers Don’t miss the season finale of the National Museum of Natural History’s popular YouTube series, the “Doctor Is In.” ...

Analyze its chemistry, compare it to known minerals and voilà. But for geologists, this process can be a time-consuming puzzle requiring specialized expertise and a lot of manual calculation.

But no Raman spectrometer, big or small, can conclusively identify Mars rocks or any other kinds of minerals without the kind of comprehensive database Downs is creating.

News ‘Rock librarian’ explains clues for identifying U.P. mine’s mystery mineral Updated: Jan. 20, 2022, 4:17 p.m. | Published: Jan. 20, 2022, 3:00 p.m.

Rocks and minerals can have significant impacts on our health. Some minerals are toxic (like native mercury, lead or silver), can cause cancer (like asbestos) or are radioactive (like uranium ores).