Scientists have invented a machine learning model that can predict the locations of minerals on Earth, and even other planets, by taking advantage of patterns in mineral associations.
This is according to a press release published on Wednesday by Phys.org.
Shaunna Morrison, Anirudh Prabhu, and their colleagues successfully engineered a tool for finding occurrences of specific minerals relying on individual experience, along with some luck.
To do this, they used data from the Mineral Evolution Database, which includes 295,583 mineral localities of 5,478 mineral species, to predict previously unknown mineral occurrences based on association rules. The researchers tried out their model on the Tecopa basin in the Mojave Desert.
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