Rubbish Quartz Worth A Fortune
Posted on August 4, 2009 by admin in Business, Environment
A few decades ago, quartz was associated with New Age circles, holistic health and the most recent innovation of holistic jewelry.
A natural crystal by definition means quartz has a regular arrangement of atoms which vibrate at a very stable frequency. These characteristics make quartz an excellent receptor and emitter of electromagnetic waves and a major element in today’s technological and information revolution.
The conversion of quartz crystals into silicon chips has transformed the world, having made the digital age possible. Quartz has given us computers, mobile phones and communication breakthroughs, involving a whole new universe of virtual reality.
Nobel-prize winning scientist, Marcel Vogel, discovered that quartz crystals could be programmed as silicon chips for use in a computer. He firmly believed that quartz could also be programmed by thought.
Grey quartz is essential for building most of the world’s silicon chips. The quartz allows the mineral to be made into CD-sized wafers which are etched with electronic circuitry.
High quality quartz, that fifty years ago was being thrown away as scrap, can now be sold for $50,000 a tonne.
Unimin Mine, in Spruce Pine, Silicon Valley, North Carolina, is the only place in the world where this ultra-pure mineral is found. The area is among the highest priorities for nuclear attack in the U.S.
How Unimin, one of the main mining corporations of the area, extracts the quartz from the mountainside, is a process that is a strictly guarded secret. The quartz mine and plants are protected by security guards, gates and cameras and no personnel from the company, are permitted to speak to outsiders concerning the business.
When photographed from the air, the quartz mines are enormous, reaching down the entire side of the mountain in tiers of rock.
“It’s the most valuable strategic square acreage on the planet,” said sixty-eight-year-old Ira Thomas, who is a ninth-generation miner. He used to dig up aquamarines and prospect for mica as a child and now works for Unimin. “Because the world runs on computers, we all know that now. And if we locked the gates to Mitchell County they could not make any more computers.”
At this stage Unimin is assured of its place in the industry, as synthetic quartz is economically too expensive to take the place of Spruce Pine’s high-purity mineral.
