Scientists discover new forms of feldspars

In high-pressure experiments, scientists have discovered new forms of the common mineral feldspar. At moderate temperatures, these hitherto unknown variants are stable at pressures of Earth's upper mantle, where common feldspar normally cannot exist. The discovery could change the view at cold subducting plates and the interpretation of seismologic signatures, as the team around DESY scientist Anna Pakhomova and Leonid Dubrovinsky from Bayerisches Geoinstitut in Bayreuth report in the journal Nature Communications.