Scientifically speaking, the term “crystal” refers to any solid that has an ordered chemical structure. This means that its parts are arranged in a precisely ordered pattern, like bricks in a wall.

(CNN) — Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have for the first time detected tiny quartz crystals containing silica - a common mineral on Earth - within the atmosphere of a blazing hot ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. “We were thrilled!” said Dr. David Grant, a researcher at the ...

Crystals -- from sugar and table salt to snowflakes and diamonds -- don't always grow in a straightforward way. Researchers have now captured this journey from amorphous blob to orderly structures. In ...

Earthquakes may cause gold nuggets to form in quartz by generating an electric field that attracts gold dissolved in fluid forced up from deep underground. Enormous gold nuggets are often associated ...

If you could see the clouds on WASP-17b, they might glitter as starlight reflects off the facets of billions of microscopic quartz crystals. As gas giant WASP-17b crossed in front of its star, a team ...

"The advantage of studying colloidal particles is that we can observe crystallization processes at a single-particle level, which is very hard to do with atoms because they're too small and fast. With ...