Strange mineral never seen before on Earth appears in Florida

A lightning bolt struck a tree in the west coast of Florida, creating an unusual phosphorus material that has never been seen on Earth before.

A scientist from the University of South Florida found that the lightning’s impact created the new mineral in a rock.

In a statement, geoscientist Matthew Pasek said the material could be a member of a new mineral group.

“We have never seen this material occur naturally on Earth- minerals similar to it can be found in meteorites and space, but we’ve never seen this exact material anywhere,” according to Pasek.

What is fulgurite?

The new substance was found in a piece of fossilized lightning, also known as fulgurite.

“When lightning strikes a tree, the ground typically explodes out and the surrounding grass dies, forming a scar and sending electric discharge through nearby rock, soil and sand, forming fulgurites,” Pasek said.

The tree that was struck is located in a New Port Richey neighborhood. Homeowners saw that it had been hit by lightning and found the fulgurite. They decided to sell the rock, in hopes that it had financial value. Pasek bought the fossil and teamed up with Luca Bindi, a mineralogy professor at the University of Florence in Italy to study it.

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Failure to replicate the new material

The two studied unusual elements that contained phosphorus to better understand the fulgurite from Florida. Inside it, there was a colorful, crystal-like material that had never been recorded before. The team worked with another scientist to try and recreate the substance, but the attempts were unsuccessful. They deduced that it was formed under very precise conditions, such as those that took place when the lightning bolt struck.

Pasek and Bindi intend to study the material further to see if it could be of some practical use and to find out if it could be officially declared a mineral.