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A new mineral was discovered in the Irkutsk region
Photo © popmech.ru
A group of scientists from Irkutsk managed to discover a previously unknown blue-blue mineral. It was discovered in the charoite deposit in the Murunsky massif, on the border between the Irkutsk region and Yakutia.
According to scientists, their find is an F-analogue of carltonite: an extremely rare mineral that was mined in only one deposit in Canada, which is currently lost.
At first, after X-ray powder diffraction analysis, they decided that it was Carltonite. But after it was studied in detail in the laboratory of applied geochemistry and analytical research methods created by IRNITU (Irkutsk National Research Technical University) and the Institute of Geochemistry SB RAS (A.P. Vinogradov Institute of Geochemistry, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences).
It was determined that fluorine prevails as an additional anion in the discovered mineral, while the OH group prevails in Canadian carltonite. Because of this, the new mineral - which turned out to be the F-analog of carltonite - was called fluorocarltonite.
The find was delivered to the State Mineralogical Museum named after A.V. Sidorova IRNITU in Irkutsk.