It’ll be a snap to identify gemstones once Robert Downs finishes his library of spectral fingerprints for all the Earth’s minerals. Downs is almost halfway there. So far, the associate professor of ...

Did you know that minerals are all around us? Minerals are the building blocks that make up rocks! They are the ores that we extract metals from to make electronics. They’re in the soils we need to ...

Everyone switched off their headlamps and there we stood together in total darkness, inside the San Gabriel Mountains. Yes, inside. I had joined a local caving group in an attempt to understand more ...

Scientists studying sulfate-rich terrains on Mars believe they may have identified a previously unknown mineral hidden in layered deposits near the planet’s vast canyon system. By combining spacecraft ...