All mysteries
Mystery #3Tier 2rocks under pressure

How can a soft, crumbly rock slowly turn into hard, sparkling stone?

Imagine a lump of soft, crumbly rock you could scratch with your thumbnail. Now imagine hard, glittering stone that a chisel can barely mark. Amazingly, the first can slowly turn into the second, all by itself. How can one kind of rock become a completely different one?

Bands of pale and dark rock bent into a tight hairpin fold, squeezed into that shape deep underground without ever melting
Photo: James St. John · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Your guess

What do you reckon? How could one kind of rock become a totally different one?

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