But the BBC seems to be telling me (albeit sort of vaguely) that it mostly comes from a pegmatite in North Carolina.
Wow. The three minerals I'm pretty sure I recognize here are mica (the hand is holding a sheet apparently peeled from the large book in the center; probably muscovite), orthoclase (the ligher creamy blobs), and quartz (the darker material around the creamy blobs). The article emphasizes the mining company's secretiveness regarding the process by which they take this rock and process it into pure silica, but I'm still a little surprised that the rock above is the best starting material.
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