Are these stones that generate electricity?
(Daniel Marven)
So no, we are not talking to you about fire stones from "Survival", but about the real thing, apparently: stones that are able to generate and supply electricity.
Viral videos shared across TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram purportedly show rocks that generate electricity.
In one of the videos it appears that the friction of the "electric stone" creates electric sparks and in the second a light bulb is lit by electrical wires connected to the stone.
The videos look completely real, but are they really?
The stones were reportedly found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and have received a lot of interest because, if they are real, they could completely change our electricity consumption.
Enthusiasm was recorded on social networks: "Looks completely real and a bit scary", one wrote and another added: "Must get a stone like this".
How would you explain it?
However, experts who spoke to the BBC were quick to cool the flames and explained that there is no way a stone exists that can generate electricity.
Minerals within stones do not have the molecular composition required to store or release electricity.
The closest thing they are able to do is pass electricity on - and that's probably what's happening here.
In the video of the friction of the stones, the frame is cut so that the edge of the stones cannot be seen, which theorizes that wires are attached to the stone (which experts believe to be a type of pyrite - the mineral form of iron sulfide) and the stone conducts the current between them.
The second video is a little more mysterious, but if you look closely at the LED when it is apparently not attached to the stone, you can see several frames where the light is on, raising the possibility that there is some kind of electrical current coming from a source other than the stone.
Alternatively, there may be a cable there that holds a small amount of electrical charge that drives the battery as the connected wires complete the circuit.
What the experts do agree on, however, is that it is not vibranium, nor is it a miracle substance that somehow generates electricity from scratch.
"We don't know of any mechanism, so far, that really supports such a phenomenon," Yugo Li, a professor of geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines told the AP.
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The second video that will deceive the viewers:
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Minerals in rocks do not have the chemistry required to be able to store electrical charge like batteries.
Batteries do not actually store electrical energy, but energy in a different form (usually chemical) which is then converted into electrical energy by chemical reactions between the anode, the cathode and the electrolyte between them.
The difference is that minerals will not release the electrons needed to store and generate electricity.
For a "natural battery" to exist, as the videos claim, the mineral would somehow have to have an anode and cathode that could interact.
Unfortunately, what appears in the videos is most likely an editorial stunt or a cheap magician's trick rather than innovative and revolutionary stones.
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electrical power
stones