
From ScienceDaily:
New research predicts that Earth has more than 1,500 undiscovered minerals and that the exact mineral diversity of our planet is unique and could not be duplicated anywhere in the cosmos.
Wouldn’t that b bad news to the cosmos-a-minute/fund us!! crowd?
Minerals form from novel combinations of elements. These combinations can be facilitated by both geological activity, including volcanoes, plate tectonics, and water-rock interactions, and biological activity, such as chemical reactions with oxygen and organic material.
Nearly a decade ago, Hazen developed the idea that the diversity explosion of planet’s minerals from the dozen present at the birth of our Solar System to the nearly 5,000 types existing today arose primarily from the rise of life. More than two-thirds of known minerals can be linked directly or indirectly to biological activity, according to Hazen. Much of this is due to the rise of bacterial photosynthesis, which dramatically increased the atmospheric oxygen concentration about 2.4 billion years ago.
– Grethe Hystad, Robert T. Downs, Edward S. Grew, Robert M. Hazen. Statistical analysis of mineral diversity and distribution: Earth’s mineralogy is unique. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2015; 426: 154 DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2015.06.028 More.
It’s certainly worth considering that life forms might shape minerals at or near Earth’s surface for their own benefit, creating a specialized environment that is not automatically replicable on a far-off planet.
Here’s the abstract:
Earth’s mineralogical diversity arises from both deterministic processes and frozen accidents. We apply statistical methods and comprehensive mineralogical databases to investigate chance versus necessity in mineral diversity-distribution relationships. Hundreds of mineral species, including most common rock-forming minerals, distinguish an “Earth-like” planet from other terrestrial bodies. However, most of Earth’s ~5000 mineral species are rare, known from only a few localities. We demonstrate that, in spite of deterministic physical, chemical, and biological factors that control most of our planet’s mineral diversity, Earth’s mineralogy is unique in the cosmos. (paywall) – Grethe Hystada, Robert T. Downsb, Edward S. Grewc, Robert M. Hazend
Just because a planet is out there somewhere and has water doesn’t mean it’s a marine aquarium, right?
See also: Copernicus, you are not going to believe who is using your name. Or how.
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This finding falls right in line with the privileged planet hypothesis. The privileged planet hypothesis states:
Yet for observers to be able to make scientific discoveries on a ‘privileged planet’, that planet would need to have the proper resources, i.e. metal ores, minerals, and energy, in order to be able to sustain a technologically advanced civilization for any reasonable amount of time.
Hugh Ross puts the situation like this:
As a Christian, I like the metaphor of ‘preparing for a wedding’ that Dr. Ross uses in the following video to illustrate the disparity that ‘The Anthropic Inequality’ presents in terms of providing a ‘window of time’ for any technologically advanced civilization in the universe to exist:
As well, in conjection with the privileged planet principle, and the anthropic inequality, the chemistry of the universe just so happens to be of optimal benefit for life like human life
a few supplemental notes:
Calcium carbonate, of which chalk, limestone and marble are made, also makes up corals, shells of snails and other animals, and stromatolites. Strontium Carbonate is used in Ceramics, Pyrotechnics, Electronics and metallurgy. Barium carbonate is widely used in the ceramics industry as an ingredient in glazes. It acts as a flux, a matting and crystallizing agent and combines with certain colouring oxides to produce unique colours not easily attainable by other means. In the brick, tile, earthenware and pottery industries barium carbonate is added to clays to precipitate soluble salts. Magnesium carbonate also has several important uses for man.
The preceding was just a brief search for uses for minerals. I’m sure that if a study were done of all 5000 minerals then many minerals on Hazen’s list of 5000 minerals will be found to be essential for technologically advanced civilization to exist.
“It’s certainly worth considering that life forms might shape minerals at or near Earth’s surface for their own benefit”
I think you have this kinda backwards. From what I understand, atmospheric oxygen and any number of other useful chemical compounds are the WASTE PRODUCTS of the processes that produce them. That is, plants eat carbon dioxide and excrete poisonous oxygen.
One can only marvel at the intricacy of the Designer’s work in setting things up like that. Plankton has no use for oxygen, but a billion years later humans would need that oxygen to make the humans’ entirely different biological systems work. And all those little critters who toiled for eons precipitating iron oxide out of sea water so that the concentrated iron deposits would be worth the effort to mine in order to make Porsches. Now THAT is “goal-seeking”.