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silvia
Joined: 10 Oct 2021
Posts: 253
Location: UK
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Posted: Jul 07, 2023 13:02 Post subject: Sad future for the Universe |
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Many thanks for your kind words but full credit should go to Mother Nature. She did all the hard work! I am just lucky to have enough spare cash on hand to buy some nice pieces thanks to the continuing support of my partner and our four adult children. Everything we do is very much a family affair, and family, (the larger the better in my opinion) is very important to me. Only one of our children has a keen interest in minerals, the others have a passion for other scientific pursuits, principally Chemistry and Physics, which makes my partner happy.
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Roger Warin
Joined: 23 Jan 2013
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Posted: Jul 07, 2023 13:25 Post subject: Re: Sad future for the Universe |
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Chemistry seems to me to be the best way to understand minerals and even the birth of the first molecules in the cold nebula.
Don't despair of the future...
Mother Nature goes the easy way: species stability.
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silvia
Joined: 10 Oct 2021
Posts: 253
Location: UK
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Posted: Jul 08, 2023 14:03 Post subject: Re: Sad future for the Universe |
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Roger Warin wrote: | Chemistry seems to me to be the best way to understand minerals and even the birth of the first molecules in the cold nebula.
Don't despair of the future...
Mother Nature goes the easy way: species stability. |
You do make me feel happy when you talk about Chemistry.
Mineral collectors have it very easy as far as ‘natural’ art is concerned. Nature has done all the hard work. The only thing we collectors need to do is place the mineral on a shelf or on a suitable acrylic stand.
My partner often says that things are not so easy when one begins building a world class display of the chemical elements. Currently he is working on some very eye catching element displays for Tin (5 kilogram) and Mercury. The Tin has been cast into a large medallion and segmented so that each of the four segments can be etched to reveal the micro and macro crystalline structure of the Tin. He says that when finished it will look like something from an Aztec temple. The Mercury will be enclosed in a spiral bulb within a bulb so that when the liquid metal flows it will appear to defy gravity.
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Roger Warin
Joined: 23 Jan 2013
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Posted: Jul 09, 2023 08:43 Post subject: Re: Sad future for the Universe |
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Jordi,
Excuse my remarks which seem out of forum, but not so much, because I try to rehabilitate the alpha formicaite, misunderstood by the IMA.
It cannot be compared to superficial alteration in a slag heap for example.
Silvia,
We are lucky to live in a young universe. This is when “Nature” finds its imagination to materially create the world we know.
Much later, our universe will disappear (in billions of billions of years), because when you consider the structure of a single atom, it is already a miracle that it exists! There exists in it an www.spam.og vacuum which will be filled when the forces which maintain it as such, will be exhausted.
The dust and gas protoplanetary disk of the star TW Hydrae was observed recently with the Hubble Space Telescope. I think this extrasolar nebula is the youngest known to date, only 5 to 10 million years old.
Water, methanol and ammonia were deposited on dust grains at low temperature (77°K) and under fractional pressure (10E-7 mbar).
Formic acid was discovered there in quantities equivalent to those of methanol.
Formic acid H-COOH is the first of the carboxylic acids, acetic acid being its higher homolog CH3COOH.
In the reference, the nature of the dust is not specified, but I believe that it is various polymorphic varieties of carbon, which pollute space like our chimneys. Indeed, the stars burn during the various nuclear fusions. This beautiful proof of love from the stars provides the materials necessary for the origin of life on Earth, coincidentally, among the most abundant, and especially carbon, a universe all to itself.
The presence of amino acids often cited because too easily revealed by ninhydrin: they already constitute an advanced stage in the synthesis of biotic molecules. These are not the initial bricks as is often said.
On the other hand, in the presence of ammonia NH3, formic acid forms thymine, a monomer of nucleic acids. Thymine is a stable aromatic heterocycle because this compound is said to be aromatic.
In the randomness of space, the probability of formation of this nucleic base (which enters into the constitution of nucleotides) is therefore favoured.
PS: chemists know 4 isomers of calcium formate: α, β, γ and δ.
The γ and δ phases are only stable at high temperatures.
α, β polymorphs are stable at ordinary temperatures.
The polymorph β is Fleischer's "formicaite", painfully formalized by the IMA.
Excuse me, Jordi.
Mineral: | alpha formate Calcium |
Locality: | Alkali Lake occurrence, Lake County, Oregon, USA | |
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Description: |
not a IMA Mineralit's the alpha-formicaite polymorph of formicaite (the beta one) |
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silvia
Joined: 10 Oct 2021
Posts: 253
Location: UK
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Posted: Jul 09, 2023 14:58 Post subject: Re: sad future for the Universe |
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Very nice photo Roger and I did enjoy your discussion.
I think FMF is now mature enough to include more work in the area of Chemistry and Physics – no offense Jordi.
I fully agree with you about the pleasure of living in a young Universe (approximately 13-14 billion years old). My partner claims that in a very distant future, some trillions of trillions of trillions of years hence, the Universe will be devoid of all matter. It will be full of photons at near zero Kelvin temperature. However, scientists have been wrong before, not that it matters as we will obviously not live to see it. I have spoken to many Physicists, Sabine Hossenfelder, for example who are now having second thoughts about the standard model, the existence of dark matter and dark energy and are very critical of the work at CERN. Perhaps the universe will not turn into a sea of Photons – we can only hope!
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James Catmur
Site Admin
Joined: 14 Sep 2006
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Location: Cambridge
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Posted: Jul 09, 2023 14:58 Post subject: Re: sad future for the Universe |
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Moved from 'Silvia's Collection', as this is not a discussion about the collection and the photo is of a specimen that is not in Silvia's collection (I have done the same in the past and it got corrected).
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James Catmur
Site Admin
Joined: 14 Sep 2006
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Posted: Jul 10, 2023 04:59 Post subject: Re: Sad future for the Universe |
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I guess it all depends on your view on the multiverse. Are the multiverses running in parallel or will they run in series, or is it a monoverse? I like the parallel multiverse view but am not clear we know, or can ever know.
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