Why can't I mine the center of some larger ore pillars?

As I'm exploring planets and come across some of the larger ore pillars, I'm finding that they have an indestructible core. I can clear maybe 2/3 the radius of the mineral, then nothing more. If I put my cursor over it, it will identify the ore correctly - but the mining beam will only cause rocky chunks to fall off without destroying anything, and the ore's durability meter won't decrease.

Is this a glitch? An oversight on the part of the developers? Or is there some enhancement that will let me mine this later? I'm about 7 systems in and haven't found anything that would let me mine it.

Solution 1:

Yes, this is a glitch. For the smaller pillars, you usually won't find this, and same for the medium-sized ones. The glitch is this; there are certain parts of the pillar that are not counted as part of the ore. This results in it being registered as a piece of ground, however, it is still part of the pillar, so you can "mine" it. You won't receive any resources from this, and it won't destroy the ore in the game.

When this occurs above-ground, you can destroy the 'core' by throwing plasma grenades at it with L1. However, if it occurs below the minimum plasma-grenade height (not too sure what this is, usually about 15 grenades below ground level), it will not be mineable.