👉 Okay, alright settle down folks! Let’s tackle something that sounds like the rejected title of a really depressing 80s teen flick. Behold...
Carbidenet.
Now, technically, "éndidot-carbídénit" is a fancy, somewhat terrifying-sounding geological name. You probably haven't stumbled upon it whilst backpacking through the Dolomites unless you really enjoy staring into dark, gaping holes in the ground. Basically, carbídenet (pronounced roughly as, and frankly nobody quite knows how to say exactly right, because of the way they were originally described) is a type of unusual, very rare, and frankly rather bleak-looking silicate mineral that's formed when carbon dioxide gets trapped in a uranium ore during metamorphism. 1! Let me unpack that for you. You have uranium – already pretty unsettling stuff because it’s basically the stuff that fuels the sun (and boy, what a terrifying thought, right?!) - and then you cram this uranium into a really, really hot, high-pressure environment. Think of the most aggressively dramatic stage play of your geological past. When the uranium gets squished, its nasty bits, and it bonds with the carbon dioxide that’s hanging around. The resulting stuff is carbídenet—basically a little, grey, stubborn record of a very violent and probably unhappy rock. ! I really wanted to say 2 here
