[sneilan1]

I wish the author had not used the words "Abandoned Mine in the Atacama Desert" Abandoned mine would've been fine. But now you've communicated the value of your find and given a basic hint of what mines to look up. The bright side is so far, author is probably fine because nobody's buying quantum crystals yet in a futures market.

At least the author has time to secure property rights and buy out old mines.

[jandrewrogers]

The vast copper-producing region of the US has large areas of similar mineralization. If they found it in the Atacama then you can find it in the US as well.

[abreidenbach]

You sure can! Small amounts have been confirmed in Arizona. I wouldn’t be surprised if deposits were quite extensive. Over 10 different confirmed locations worldwide. See the Mindat page on herbertsmithite if you’re curious

[jandrewrogers]

Good shout for Mindat, I should have searched that immediately (I use it for other things).

Looking at the chemical structure it is a supergene mineral but what makes it unique is that it has zinc without the metals that normally associated with zinc in these deposits. That is an unusual elemental configuration. It seems like a thing you could model but it isn’t surprising that no one has because it wouldn’t have a use in mining.

The places where you would find this ore may not be in places with commercially viable deposit scale as a copper play, especially if it is mostly copper-zinc. The US west is littered with concentrated micro-deposits of diverse copper minerals but no one maps them in a serious way.

[abreidenbach]

What metals normally associate with Zinc? Isn’t copper a pretty normal associate? There’s a lot of sulphates, silicon, silver, iron, etc in other minerals at this mine too

And yeah, it could be a lot of undiscovered places as a supergene mineral. The ones I found were right next to an industrial sized heap mine though. A lot of Chile’s more recent mining efforts target supergene minerals. That’s also why it was measured though…

[jandrewrogers]

Everyone targets supergene deposits. They have good properties when you find them. I know of some not on any maps.

Elements run in herds. If you see zinc, you often see lead, silver, et al in significant quantities. If you see copper, you often see gold, antimony, arsenic, et al. Both groups are also often found together. If it is a supergene ore, you also often see hematite, limonite, and other iron minerals.

To see zinc and copper together without being contaminated by the rest of either their herd is actually pretty unusual. You can find samples of zinc or copper individually that have chemistry similar to the target mineral but not both together. Your objective is rare for a reason. From a geochemistry standpoint how this mineral happens is a pretty interesting question.

The chloride aspect helpfully limits the search space. Atacama, including where you found your samples, has massive surface salt domes which is undoubtedly where the chloride comes from. You do not see this in vast parts of the American copper belt that are otherwise rich in zinc and copper. That might actually be a way to target it in North America but I suspect it isn’t well-mapped. It would require a modicum of research. On the other hand, it isn’t well-mapped in South America either. I know about it because I was there.

I am a chemist by training and a geology nerd. I’ve also spent an inordinate amount of time in both the Atacama and the American Mountain West, both of which are prime search areas. It is probably possible to develop a heuristic for locating concentrated deposits of this specific mineral but that is a research and exploration exercise on its own.