The Significance of Micas in Ancient Cross-bedded Sandstones

In our study of thin sections of the cross-bedded Coconino Sandstone we encountered muscovite as a trace mineral in almost every thin section of the hundreds that we cut. As we began to study other similar cross-bedded sandstones like the Tensleep, Lyons and Hopeman the same pattern began to emerge. All of these sandstones have been conventionally interpreted as desert wind-blown deposits. A novel set of experiments were performed and recently published by some Cedarville University geology students and the lead author of this paper (Anderson et al., 2017). They found when muscovite-rich quartz sand was experimentally placed into a simulated eolian setting, muscovite only survived for a matter of days. When muscovite-rich quartz sand was experimentally placed into a simulated subaqueous setting it was still present after a year of constant agitation before the experiment was finally terminated. Even though this was a simple experiment and only a limited number of trials were performed it confirms field observations by the authors that mica is rare in modern eolian deposits (unless they are very near a granitic source) and its relative abundance in beach and marine sands. The implications are significant. Although more experiments could be performed, the experiments and observations suggest that mica is rapidly degraded in wind-blown environments and survives when transported by water. Evidently water cushions the grain-to-grain collisions and prevents rapid deterioration of the muscovite in subaqueous settings. This proposed paper will catalog and illustrate the large number of cross-bedded sandstones we have found that contain mica (mostly muscovite) as an accessory mineral. The dominant conventional view is that these sandstones are eolian, but the presence of muscovite based on experimental data and field observations suggests otherwise. The presence of muscovite in cross-bedded sandstones can be used as one of many criteria to argue for subaqueous deposition

The Hartree-Fock triplet instability: influence of conformation and substitution

The triplet Hartree-Fock (HF) instability is investigated through the examples of substituted ethylenes and the small linear conjugated systems butadiene, hexatriene, octatetraene. A statistical analysis is performed for several conformations of the latters. The second eigenvalue of the instability matrix appears to be able to discriminate the groups of unsaturated compounds. The HF instability is largely influenced by conjugation and mesomeric effects and thus by the geometry. The number of pi electrons is also an important factor. The electronic correlation related to the HF instability is not quantified by the energy difference between the post-HF and HF levels. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved