Unusual rocks may be valuable. When a man reportedly stumbled on a smoking rock in Pasay City, he thought it was a meteorite worth a million pesos and brought it home.
The rock finder’s sister-in-law, Jenelyn Batutay, said it was not that big but it weighed about 10 kilos and small magnets stuck to it, according to the TV program AHA!
Meteorite collector Abe Ambrocio told AHA! that meteorites attract magnets because they are made of iron and nickel. But when he examined the rock, a magnet did not stick to it.
Unlike Ambrocio’s meteorite, the big rock had no fusion crust or the shape of a body that was orbiting in space. The burnt smell of the rock indicated it had been near something that was being burned.
Moreover, the rock had shiny tiny crystals that a meteorite doesn’t have. Such crystals are present in ordinary rocks. Ambrocio concluded that it was not a meteorite, to Batutay’s dismay.
Meanwhile, rocks can be valuable if they contain rare earth elements such as lanthanum, neodymium and terbium, which are essential to electric vehicles, wind turbines and other clean technologies.
Rare earth elements are pricey because they are hard to extract and are mined in small concentrations like diamond and gold. Australian researchers, however, claimed in a study that there is a place rich in rare earth metals.
Michael Anenburg, a research fellow at the Australian National University and author of a study on rare earth, said the valuable rocks were found in a huge mass of iron ore lying beneath the mining town of Kiruna in Arctic Sweden, CNN reports.
The researchers said the rare metals coveted by technological manufacturers are found in magma within extinct volcanoes.
If this can’t be found, there is still another way to get rare earth metals. Another recent study found materials from old cell phones, electric vehicles and other sources could provide a huge and overlooked source of rare earths that could vastly reduce the need to mine, according to CNN. WJG @tribunephl_wjg