2.7" Highly Fluorescent Yooperlite Sphere - Michigan

Found along the shores of Michigan's beaches, syenite rock rich with fluorescent sodalite (Yooperlite) isn't your typical stone. Though easily mistaken for other igneous rocks, the rock erupts in bright pinks, reds, yellows, and oranges when exposed to ultraviolet light, glowing in veins and crystals around the syenite clasts. Long-wave UV light exposure gives it red-orange or pink fluorescence, and short-wave UV light causes it to glow orange or yellow-orange.

Yooperlite is the name given to this mineral after it was brought to the world's attention by avid beach-combing agate collector, Erik Rintamaki, in 2018. "Yooper" is a nickname for people of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, or the U.P., and "lite" refers to the sodalite in the mineral. Erik was searching for agates by the shore of Lake Superior using UV lights at night when he came across the Yooperlite radiating fluorescence.

Yooperlite's brilliant glow is a reaction of the fluorescent sodalite to UV light. There are other minerals that fluoresce in the presence of UV light, including Petoskey stones (fossilized rugose coral), limestone, and sandstone, though these minerals do not glow with the same brightness or patterns as Yooperlites.

While sodalite is a rather common mineral, Yooperlites are the first appearance of sodalite in the state of Michigan, where these newly discovered minerals are primarily collected. Geologists believe that Yooperlite formed in the Canadian Shield and, over millions of years of glacial movement, deposited in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.