Elements not occurring in minerals
Dear colleagues,
A friend of mine, Hamza from Norway, had a very interesting question a few
days ago.
I suggested to forward his question to this list, so here goes:
"Are there geological environments, either on Earth or elsewhere in the
Solar System, that could produce mineral species containing elements not
presently represented as essential constituents in any known mineral? If
so, what would those environments look like?"
We sure look forward to hearing from you!
Cheers, Herwig
I’m not quite answering your colleague’s question, but I wanted to highlight that planetary scientists believe (based on laboratory experiments and Cassini spectral data) that Saturn’s moon Titan could have a mineralogy dominated by organic co-crystals: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.accounts.1c00250.
Amy
From: Herwig Pelckmans via MSA-talk msa-talk@minlists.org
Date: Monday, June 8, 2026 at 13:06
To: msa-talk@minlists.org msa-talk@minlists.org
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [MSA-talk] Elements not occurring in minerals
Dear colleagues,
A friend of mine, Hamza from Norway, had a very interesting question a few days ago.
I suggested to forward his question to this list, so here goes:
"Are there geological environments, either on Earth or elsewhere in the Solar System, that could produce mineral species containing elements not presently represented as essential constituents in any known mineral?
If so, what would those environments look like?"
We sure look forward to hearing from you!
Cheers, Herwig
Hi Herwig,
The Mao and Hemley group did a lot of high-pressure experiments of phases that mimic the "near surface" environment of Jupiter, and they found several ways to solidify clathrate type compounds containing Ar or even Xe to my recollection.
Bob
From: Herwig Pelckmans via MSA-talk msa-talk@minlists.org
Sent: Sunday, June 7, 2026 5:43 AM
To: msa-talk@minlists.org msa-talk@minlists.org
Subject: [EXT] [MSA-talk] Elements not occurring in minerals
External Email
Dear colleagues,
A friend of mine, Hamza from Norway, had a very interesting question a few days ago.
I suggested to forward his question to this list, so here goes:
"Are there geological environments, either on Earth or elsewhere in the Solar System, that could produce mineral species containing elements not presently represented as essential constituents in any known mineral?
If so, what would those environments look like?"
We sure look forward to hearing from you!
Cheers, Herwig
Hi
Almost all elements are already represented in known minerals.
Some exceptions:
Noble gases might end up in solid form if the pressure is high enough, consider cores of more massive planets like Jupiter. Xenon oxides are known solids, but unstable on Earth’s surface conditions. One might envision some fractionation processes that enrich a noble gas to the degree that it can form an oxide of its own. In any case, unlikely to be a geologically accessible environment.
Short lived radioactive elements are mostly gone from the Solar System unless made anthropogenically or recently created elsewhere in the galaxy and the Solar System happened to pass through them (or vice versa). Whether these atoms will be sufficiently abundant or hang around for long enough to be fractionated and concentrated into a mineral is a good question.
Some of the heavier lanthanides are not sufficiently abundant to become an essential element on their own right, but a bit of self promotion here, see paper where I did the exercise of figuring out the fractionation required to get any one of the lanthanides as the most abundant element in a mineral: https://doi.org/10.1180/mgm.2020.70 (and it’s open access)
Cheers
Michael Anenburg
From: Herwig Pelckmans via MSA-talk msa-talk@minlists.org
Sent: Sunday, 7 June 2026 10:43 PM
To: msa-talk@minlists.org
Subject: [MSA-talk] Elements not occurring in minerals
Dear colleagues,
A friend of mine, Hamza from Norway, had a very interesting question a few days ago.
I suggested to forward his question to this list, so here goes:
"Are there geological environments, either on Earth or elsewhere in the Solar System, that could produce mineral species containing elements not presently represented as essential constituents in any known mineral?
If so, what would those environments look like?"
We sure look forward to hearing from you!
Cheers, Herwig
There has been a lot of experimental work done with the Vanderwall bonding in clathrates of group 18 elements on the periodic table
From: Downs, Robert T - (rdowns) via MSA-talk msa-talk@minlists.org
Sent: Monday, June 8, 2026 1:35 PM
To: msa-talk@minlists.org msa-talk@minlists.org; Herwig Pelckmans herwig.pelckmans@gmail.com
Subject: [MSA-talk] Re: [EXT] Elements not occurring in minerals
Hi Herwig,
The Mao and Hemley group did a lot of high-pressure experiments of phases that mimic the "near surface" environment of Jupiter, and they found several ways to solidify clathrate type compounds containing Ar or even Xe to my recollection.
Bob
From: Herwig Pelckmans via MSA-talk msa-talk@minlists.org
Sent: Sunday, June 7, 2026 5:43 AM
To: msa-talk@minlists.org msa-talk@minlists.org
Subject: [EXT] [MSA-talk] Elements not occurring in minerals
External Email
Dear colleagues,
A friend of mine, Hamza from Norway, had a very interesting question a few days ago.
I suggested to forward his question to this list, so here goes:
"Are there geological environments, either on Earth or elsewhere in the Solar System, that could produce mineral species containing elements not presently represented as essential constituents in any known mineral?
If so, what would those environments look like?"
We sure look forward to hearing from you!
Cheers, Herwig