[Rockhounds] The “Dolomite Problem” – Scientists Resolve 200-Year-Old Geology Mystery

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

For two centuries, scientists have failed to grow a common mineral in the
laboratory under the conditions believed to have formed it naturally. Now,
a team of researchers from the University of Michigan
<https://scitechdaily.com/tag/university-of-michigan/> and Hokkaido
University in Sapporo, Japan have finally pulled it off, thanks to a new
theory developed from atomic simulations.

Their success resolves a long-standing geology mystery called the “Dolomite
Problem.” Dolomite—a key mineral in the Dolomite mountains in Italy,
Niagara Falls, the White Cliffs of Dover, and Utah’s Hoodoos—is very
abundant in rocks *older than 100 million years*
<https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.2c00078#>, but
nearly absent in younger formations.

“If we understand how dolomite grows in nature, we might learn new
strategies to promote the crystal growth of modern technological
materials,” said Wenhao Sun, the Dow Early Career Professor of Materials
Science and Engineering at U-M and the corresponding author of the paper
recently published in *Science*.

The secret to finally growing dolomite in the lab was removing defects in
the mineral structure as it grows. When minerals form in water, atoms
usually deposit neatly onto an edge of the growing crystal surface.
However, the growth edge of dolomite consists of alternating rows of
calcium and magnesium. In water, calcium and magnesium will randomly attach
to the growing dolomite crystal, often lodging into the wrong spot and
creating defects that prevent additional layers of dolomite from forming.
This disorder slows dolomite growth to a crawl, meaning it would take 10
million years to make just one layer of ordered dolomite.

https://scitechdaily.com/the-dolomite-problem-scientists-resolve-200-year-old-geology-mystery/