From the front matter of Denis Shaw's Trace Elements in Magmas

[kaberett]

Geochemistry is a compilation of imprecise, irreproducible and uncoordinated analyses.
(i) Keep the rocks in mind, for they cannot be reduced to analytical measurements; (ii) (from O. F. Tuttle) minerals are the archives of the rocks; (iii) keep filing [your] fingernails while waving [your] arms.

Relatedly: a lecturer's assertion during my undergrad that fundamentally you cannot argue with the rocks [ergo any theory you develop must be supported by the rocks], hence in part this poem of mine; and the general feeling among my group's principle investigators that geochemistry is fundamentally characterised by paranoia, and how relaxed you're willing to be about cleanliness.

Comments

[davidgillon]

:)

So, I guess for geochemistry the Scientific Method really is written in stone ;)

[403]

Working with carbonaceous meteorites was like that, too. (No cleanroom, though. Instead, learning to do experiments in soft vacuum when we didn't actually have a depressurization-capable glove box.)

Incidentally, what kinds of uncommon minerals might be available to a society that had access to the upper mantle? I've got a little SF story kicking around the back of my head that's set in a chain of deep ocean habitats near the mid-Atlantic ridge.

[kaberett]

Deep ocean habitats: probably what you care about most is black smokers and associated mineral deposits, where hydrothermal venting concentrates economically valuable (currently!) elements and minerals (in general they are no more concentrated in the mantle than they are in continental volcanics). That kind of surface expression of warm hydrothermal circulation is also associated with deep-sea biotic habitats, so it would be plausible that humans/intelligent society would also concentrate in those areas...