If you were to hold a grain of zircon in your hand, it would look like nothing special — just a tiny, sand-sized crystal, no bigger than the width of a hair. Yet within that humble speck lies the ...

NATURAL zircons generally luminesce yellow or orange under ultra-violet light 1,2. The luminescence is not caused by the tetravalent uranium responsible for the absorption spectra of zircon 1,3.

Trace elements diffuse negligible distances through the pristine crystal lattice in minerals: this is a fundamental assumption when using them to decipher geological processes. For example, the ...