On social media, videos are circulating claiming the discovery of boulders in Africa that have electrical power. Is there really a rock like this in the real world?
In the video, the rock is claimed to contain a new type of mineral that somehow has an electric charge. The person in the video demonstrates by rubbing two pieces of rock together, and sparks appear. The stone is then connected by cables. Furthermore, it looks like the stone is powering an LED.
That said, the rock was discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on the African continent, and has attracted great attention because if it exists, it could potentially be converted into batteries and power storage.
Electrically charged stones discovered in the Democratic republic of Congo, now more trouble coming, cry my beloved Africa. pic.twitter.com/6aa6Iz2sSp
— Daniel Marven (@danielmarven) January 21, 2023
Unfortunately, what is shown in the viral video is not true. As quoted from IFL Science, experts confirm that electricity generating such minerals is, to the best of our current knowledge, impossible.
Scientific explanation
Experts explained that the minerals in rocks do not have the necessary molecular arrangement to store or release charges. The best a rock can do is just scatter it.
That's what might happen like in the viral video. Apparently, the video frames were cropped or edited in such a way that the edges of the rocks couldn't be seen in the splattered video, so it's possible the wires were connected to the minerals, and the rocks conduct electricity.
Regarding the LEDs that light up when connected, if you look closely at the LEDs when they're not connected to the rock, there are some frames where the light is still on, so it's most likely that some sort of current is coming from somewhere else and not from the rock.
Alternatively, there may also be a capacitor somewhere that stores a small amount of charge which powers the battery when the connected wires complete a circuit of amperage.
What is clear, though, is that this is not a vibranium-like rock from the land of Wakanda like in Marvel's Black Panther, nor is it a magical material that somehow generates electricity out of nothing.
"So far, we don't know of any mechanism that actually supports such a phenomenon," said Yaoguo Li, a professor of geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines.
Minerals lack the chemicals to be able to store a charge like a battery. Batteries don't actually store electrical energy, but energy in a different form (most often chemical) which is then converted to electrical energy through chemical reactions between the anode, cathode, and electrolyte in between.
The difference is, the mineral will not give up the electrons it needs to store and generate charge. For a 'natural battery' to work as claimed in the video, the mineral must have an anode and a cathode that can interact.
