III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet Lifescape

Thompson, Joanna. Life Helps Make Almost Half of All Minerals on Earth. Quanta. July 1,, 2022. A science writer explains and praises the latest major, update contribution by Robert Hazen (search) and Shaunna Morrison, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington DC, Sergey Krivovichev, Kola Science Center. Murmansk, and Robert Downs, University of Arizona about the many ways that living systems have influenced our animated geological compositions. Their paper is Lumping and Splitting: Toward a Classification of Mineral Natural Kinds in American Mineralogist 107/7, 2022.

The impact of Earth’s geology on life is easy to see, with organisms adapting to environments as different as deserts, mountains, forests and oceans. The full impact of life on geology, however, can be easy to miss. A new survey of our planet’s minerals corrects that omission. Among its findings is evidence that about half of all mineral diversity is the direct or indirect result of living entity systems. It’s a discovery that could provide valuable insights to scientists piecing together Earth’s complex geological history — and also to those searching for evidence of life beyond this world.

Morrison and Hazen also identified 57 processes created all known minerals. These processes included weathering, chemical precipitations, metamorphic transformations, lightning strikes, radiation, oxidation, massive impacts, and even condensations in interstellar space. The biggest single factor in mineral diversity on Earth is water in a variety of chemical and physical ways. But they also found that life is a key player whose fingerprints are on about half of all minerals.