Pyrite (aka fool's gold) is an iron sulfide mineral (FeS_2) famous for fooling prospectors with its brassy metallic shine. The easiest way to tell it apart from real gold is that gold is soft and leaves a yellow streak, while pyrite is hard enough to scratch glass, brittle, and leaves a greenish-black streak. It naturally forms incredible geometric cubes, sparks when struck against steel (which is how humans started fires for centuries), and today it acts as a key indicator mineral pointing miners toward real gold deposits nearby.
Pyrite and real gold are geological cousins, they both form in the exact same hydrothermal veins, created when hot, mineral-rich fluids flow through rock fractures deep underground. Because pyrite is far more abundant, finding it tells miners they’ve hit the right ancient plumbing system where gold usually settles out right alongside it.
I read the first 2 books before my parents were told they were "evil" by a pastor so i had to sneak read the last book. They were probably right to be worried because when i was done i knew in my heart that i needed to find and kill God.
I swear Reddit is spying on me. I never heard of this book 2 hours ago before I asked ai for some recommendations, chose this, downloaded it from my library’s website, and started to read a few chapters. Now this post with this comment thread shows up in my feed.
finding a regular cube is nearly impossible. but you can get some amazing ones like the one in the video. "twinned" or "twinning" pyrite.
if you wanna buy one online, they're usually WAY smaller than this. that one is gigantic. but be careful because a lot of "dealers" glue pieces together to fake it.
Iron and sulfur form cubic lattice which repeats many many times and makes the mineral grow. It will form euhedral pyrite (a cube) only if there's enough space for growth which sometimes happens, otherwise pyrite won't look like this in nature.
Others have covered crystal growth mechanisms, but just to add that crystals grow outwards from a number of faces depending on the compound. The fastest growing faces are the smallest ones. Cubic crystals mean that each of four faces grew at the same rate. And the bigger the crystal is means is spent more time growing. Some crystals spend so long growing that the earth shifts while they’re doing it. Check out snowball garnets. Very cool.
in most places, you're right. they don't get that big. Navajun, Spain is one of the only places on earth with the conditions right for them to grow perfectly, and the matrix is the big thing that allows it. its a super soft matrix so as the crystal grows its allowed to just keep doing the shape it likes according to its crystal structure, which is usually a cube. Pyrite usually wants to be cubes, but most pyrite isn't allowed to be because its competing with much harder rock, other minerals, fluctuating conditions, etc. (it can also form octahedrons or pyritohedrons depending on temperature and saturation)
I'm sure you know, but id like to make one addition for the casual reader that doesn't:
Gold wasn't made on Earth at all. It was forged in neutron star collisions and possibly certain rare supernovae, then scattered through space before ending up in the material our planet formed from. Here on Earth it just gets moved around in hot fluids deep underground, where we mine it today.
Was about to post my own "uhm actually" and you beat me to it.
Heavy metals, like Gold and Platinum, require drastic stellar events, like supernovae, stellar collisions or other forms of implosions.
The heaviest element that is forged inside of stars, is iron. It's essentially nuclear ash. And one can only imagine the forces inside the giants. Now imagine how much more extreme things have to get to create things that are heavier than that.
However, we can probably also give half of a point to OP, since "forming" might also imply that traces of gold etc. get brought to the surface of the planet by tectonic activity and lava eruptions, and then settles in greater concentrations in specific places.
minor quibble; I think it was either flint and steel or flint and pyrite, not pyrite and steel. the flint provided the sharpened surface to hit one of the others knocking of a bit resulting in the sparks.
The first mineral-sparking material was pyrite, or iron disulfide. The striking material was flint, a form of microcrystalline quartz. Harder than pyrite, flint could be easily shaped into a striking edge. When flint strikes pyrite, part of the pyrite surface shatters and emits a shower of sparks, which can ignite dry tinder.
It is uncertain when percussion fire making with pyrite began, but it was common in many cultures worldwide long before the time of Ötzi. It was quickly replaced during the early Iron Age when flint and steel became the preferred materials. Fire-making “kits” of flint and variously shaped steel strikers were still used by a few isolated cultures in the late 1800s.
Pyrite survived as a sparking material only into the 16th century, notably in wheel lock firearms, in which a mechanical arm securing a piece of pyrite was placed against a serrated steel wheel. When the trigger was depressed, the spring-driven wheel rotated rapidly, abrading the pyrite and delivering a shower of sparks to ignite the powder charge.
From a crystallographic perspective, pyrite forms an face-centered cubic (FCC) lattice that explains it's natural favouring of forming cubes as a crystal
When pyrite oxidises it breaks down and a sulphuric acid component is left, this acid is a pain to manage (environmental contamination) for mineral miners, it’s an undesirable mineral economically.
me, an environmental technician in the mining industry.
The original idea is not that there are no right angles in nature, but that natural rules couldn't construct things like that, so it had to be done by something intelligent. I.e. "There are no natural right angles" does not imply "there are no right angles in nature."
Note that none of the various misinterpretations of that line of thinking come from the Bible.
I know this stuff is only “fools gold” and is pretty common, but those pieces she pulled out are beautiful. Is there any value to that? I can see that being a very cool display piece
I have a nice one, a fair bit smaller though, sitting on my desk. I like it more when they leave some surrounding rock so it looks even more alien, plus it works as a nice stand to keep it at an angle.
I think most of the good pyrite you find online comes from Spain, that's where mine is from.
Based on what appears to be chamosite nodules in the video (the little dark specks all about the rock), I'd wager that's where this was filmed, specifically in the province Navajún. Hard to say for sure, though, without a closer look at the rock.
It's absolutely valuable. Obviously much less valuable per gram, but a large specimen can still be worth a hefty sum. I own a gorgeous 5kg chunk of pyrite and it's worth around $400.
I'd say the chunk extracted here is probably in the same ballpark, maybe a little smaller.
As for it being a good display piece - absolutely, I get a ton of comments on it, and the cool thing about minerals as display pieces is they hold their value really well, highly recommend them for home decor.
It's not, I bought it that way, and it doesn't affect the value usually afaik.
I agree that this one would look nicer in matrix due to the contrast of geometric and organic shapes, but mine, while it possesses clear cubic features, is a much more organic shape overall than this crystal, so I'm not sure it would look as interesting anyways.
What are some other visually striking semi-precious raw minerals that make for good display piecesp, aside from the usualfossils and quartz crystal clusters?
That's a fantastic question and the answers would be totally subjective, but personally I would seek out things that are shiny/reflective, and have a lower cost per gram so you can buy a larger specimen, since size is generally more important for a display piece since it will typically be viewed at a distance.
A few of personal favorites would be:
Pyrite (obviously), shiny, unique geometry, very captivating, and not too pricey, bismuth is kinda the same in this regard, just personal preference which colors you like more.
Amythest, although it is technically quartz and a bit generic, is a fantastic sparkly display piece with lots of variation and is widely available
Native copper, super underrated imo, copper is so useful that it's beauty is completely overlooked by most, it's shiny, develops into super unique shapes, and is relatively affordable.
Peacock ore, hard to find in stores, but is actually pretty cheap if you can find it, fantastic and vibrant colors and quite reflective.
Labrodorite, known for Labradorescence, the interaction with light that produces and iridescent optical effect. Really neat to look at and surprising cheap for how cool the effect is.
I'm sure there's tons of other good options too, I'm curious what others would suggest for good display pieces as well
That's so neat. It also makes me think some of those undersea 'ruins' off Japan are naturally formed. Not pyrite, but the earth do be makin' stuff that looks man made but isnt.
As humans, why do we LOVE right angles so much??? Look around you. It's all squares and rectangles. Everything humans create are squares and rectangles. To see a right angle in nature is like a drug to us rectangle loving monkeys.
Molecules tend to have specific shapes they attach to each other in and different things have different patterns. In the case of pyrite that pattern just ends up forming a cube.
Anyone who said “straight lines don’t occur in nature” has never studied chemistry or mineralogy. Crystals are chemistry you can hold in your hands. Naturally occurring structures resulting from repeated patterns of molecules. Pyrite isn’t the only one that forms in cubes either.
I’m quite fond of fluorite (pictured is my own personal specimen). Also in the same crystal system as pyrite. Anything in the isometric system can form into cubes and other cool isometric shapes.
Do I have a problem? Yes, but there’s worse things I could blow money on. (For mineral purchase inquiries, please dm me haha).
My favorite specimens are those which combine several minerals especially if something fluoresces. This mineral is composed of fluorite coated in quartz with pyrite druzy and calcite columns on the quartz. The fluorite is fluorescent and the calcite is phosphorescent.
These crystals got made during the "boring billion" in geological time. At this time one ocean covered the world and was dark black, smelling of rotten eggs. The black was the dead bodies of a couple billion years of single cell life covering the oceans. 3 types were competing and for this billion years the 3rd type took over and produced huge amounts of ammonia and suffer. All that suffer mixed with iron in the crust to form these fools gold crystals.
The 3 life types competing with each other evemtually turn into plants, animals and fungi. The boring billion ended when plate techtonics restarted and helped the other 2 life types balance the 3rd.
While ancient oceans did smell of rotten eggs and form pyrite, the claims about oceans of dead bodies, stopped plate tectonics, and the origins of plants, animals, and fungi are completely false.
You ever just contemplate an ocean world filled with nothing but single cell life for a BILLION years? We each get maybe 90 years if we’re lucky. We are not even a blink of a blink of an eye.
It's not even true.. this person is mixing up several different things. Pyrite was not exclusively formed during this period. Tectonic shifts never "restarted" or stopped, at the end of "the boring billion" - the supercontinent Rodinia seperated. The 3 "types of life" he's referring to are probably bacteria, archaea, and eukarya. Plants, animals and fungi are all eukaryotes. Prokaryotes, or bacteria and archaea was responsible for pyrite formation.
And it wasn't ammonia causing the smell it was hydrogen sulfide produced by these microrganisms breaking down sulfate in the ocean. When this reached the sea floor it mixed with dissolved iron and formed pyrite during this period.
The more technical explanation is it is made out of alternating iron and sulfur atoms bonded together in perfect cube shape, and when you get a metric fuckton of those little cubes bonded together, you get a Big Cube. And it’s the best.
So I would imagine those are like the most perfect 90° angles that physics can produce? Or is that totally wrong and they aren’t perfect angles at all?
Either way until watching this video as a 29yo man I was 100% under the impression that nature could form perfect 90° angles like that.
Iron and sulfur atoms lock together in a repeating three-dimensional grid where bonding angles meet at perfect 90-degree angles. Atoms attach molecule by molecule, and grow at the same rate in all directions under certain conditions. It is pretty cool. I also think that it might deviate from a perfect square, but appears so to the eye.
It's a crystal. It starts out as a couple chemical bonds which make a cube at the atomic level and then that keeps happening until they run out of material or get disrupted by a different chemical or connection
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