{"id":15869,"date":"2016-02-24T15:04:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T15:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=15869"},"modified":"2016-03-09T08:30:54","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T08:30:54","slug":"earths-missing-chemistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=15869","title":{"rendered":"Earth’s missing chemistry."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tAt the precise moment I write this, there is information about 108,230,950 organic and inorganic chemical substances from the World's disclosed chemistry. So it was with a sense of curiosity that I came across this article in the American Mineralogist[1]<\/a><\/span> entitled "Earth’s “missing” minerals" (the first in a series of articles apparently planned on the topic of the missing ones). The abstract is particularly interesting and whilst I encourage you to go read the article itself, I will quote some eye-catching observations from just this abstract:\n<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n\t\tMineralogists can apparently accurately estimate a mineralogical diversity of (just) 6394 minerals; compare this with the number of 108,230,950 recorded for organic and inorganic molecules.\n\t<\/li>\n
  2. \n\t\tOf which however > 1563 have yet to be described (~25%). \n\t<\/li>\n
  3. \n\t\tThe elements Al, B, C, Cr, Cu, Mg, Na, Ni, P, S, Si, Ta, Te, U, and V are geochemically diverse.\n\t<\/li>\n
  4. \n\t\tOf this subset, Al, B, C, Cr, P, Si, and Ta, again ~25% remain to be discovered.\n\t<\/li>\n
  5. \n\t\tAlmost 35% of the predicted minerals containing Na are undiscovered, probably because they are white, poorly crystallised and water-soluble!\n\t<\/li>\n
  6. \n\t\tBut fewer then 20% of the minerals of Cu, Mg, Ni, S, Te, U, and V remain to be discovered, attributed to their economic value and often bright colours!\n\t<\/li>\n
  7. \n\t\tAt 9.9%, Te has the smallest predicted percentage of missing minerals of the elements studied.\n\t<\/li>\n
  8. \n\t\tThe disparities in percentages of undiscovered minerals is attributed in part to sociological factors in the search, discovery, and description of mineral species.\n\t<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \n\tOf course comparison with the whole of molecular chemistry is difficult; minerals are natural species, mostly formed I presume without the help of living organisms. Which makes me wonder what proportion of the 108,230,950 organic and inorganic chemical substances noted above occur naturally and have been formed without the help of living organisms. The latter of course are called "natural products", and there must be many millions of those.\n<\/p>\n

    \n

    \n\tPostscript<\/b>. If you want to search for the crystal structures of minerals, this site is useful: http:\/\/database.iem.ac.ru\/mincryst\/<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

    \n\t <\/p>\n

    References<\/h2>\n
    1. R.M. Hazen, G. Hystad, R.T. Downs, J.J. Golden, A.J. Pires, and E.S. Grew, \"Earth\u2019s \u201cmissing\u201d minerals\", American Mineralogist<\/i>, vol. 100, pp. 2344-2347, 2015. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2138\/am-2015-5417<\/a>\n\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n<\/div> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      At the precise moment I write this, there is information about 108,230,950 organic and inorganic chemical substances from the World's disclosed chemistry. So it was with a sense of curiosity that I came across this article in the American Mineralogist entitled "Earth’s “missing” minerals" (the first in a series of articles apparently planned on the topic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":5,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1684,1682,1683,1685],"ppma_author":[2661],"class_list":["post-15869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-chemistry","tag-inorganic-chemical-substances","tag-mineral","tag-mineralogist","tag-natural-products"],"yoast_head":"\nEarth's missing chemistry. - Henry Rzepa's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=15869\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Earth's missing chemistry. - Henry Rzepa's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At the precise moment I write this, there is information about 108,230,950 organic and inorganic chemical substances from the World's disclosed chemistry. 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Amongst other activities, it publishes two editions\u00a0of a newsletter each year for its members. A new theme was recently launched asking for contributions on the topic of \u00a0\"two influential books\" and shortly to appear in the winter 2023\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32368,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=32368","url_meta":{"origin":15869,"position":2},"title":"Molecular structure representation of sulfur-nitride systems: Are Lewis structures useful here?","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"October 4, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"I posed this question back in 2010: \"(Almost) 100 years of Lewis structures: are they still fit for purpose?\". I was reminded of this when I came across this relatively recent article describing the structures of three binary sulfur-nitrogen anions, as shown in Figure 1 of their article. These are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16228,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=16228","url_meta":{"origin":15869,"position":3},"title":"Oxane oxide: a tautomer of hydrogen peroxide.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"April 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"If H3N+-O-\u00a0is viable compared with its tautomer H2N-OH when carrying water bridges,\u00a0then why not try\u00a0H2O+-O- vs HO-OH? There are no examples to be found in crystal structures!\u00a0The\u00a0solvated structure of\u00a0H2O+-O-\u00a0is modified directly from that of\u00a0H3N+-O- and the computed (\u03c9B97XD\/6-311++G(d,p)\/SCRF=water) structure is\u00a0shown below. Noteworthy is that the hydrogen bonds at\u00a0the\u00a0O+\u00a0end are\u00a0far stronger\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32123,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=32123","url_meta":{"origin":15869,"position":4},"title":"Unrecognised inorganic metalla-aromatic rings? The mystery of (cyclo-N,S)-titanocenes.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"October 3, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Metalla-aromatics have been defined as metallacycles that are derived from the formal replacement of a carbon atom in the framework of an organic aromatic ring with a metal fragment.. Here I explore whether this simple definition can be broadened to sulfur-nitrogen rings which contain few, if indeed any,,, carbon atoms\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Interesting chemistry"","block_context":{"text":"Interesting chemistry","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=4"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17951,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=17951","url_meta":{"origin":15869,"position":5},"title":"Supporting information: chemical graveyard or invaluable resource for chemical structures.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"March 31, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Nowadays, data supporting\u00a0most publications relating to the synthesis of organic compounds is more likely than not to be found in associated \"supporting information\" rather than the (often page limited) article itself. For example, this article has an SI which is paginated at 907; almost a mini-database in its own right!\u2020\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chemical IT"","block_context":{"text":"Chemical IT","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"authors":[{"term_id":2661,"user_id":1,"is_guest":0,"slug":"admin","display_name":"Henry Rzepa","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/897b6740f7f599bca7942cdf7d7914af5988937ae0e3869ab09aebb87f26a731?s=96&d=blank&r=g","author_category":"1","first_name":"Henry","last_name":"Rzepa","user_url":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8635-8390","job_title":"","description":"Emeritus Professor of Computational Chemistry at Imperial College London."}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15869"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15884,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15869\/revisions\/15884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15869"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fppma_author&post=15869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}