The irony of transitioning to clean energy is we’re going to have to mine the shit out of the Earth to do it. Much like our computers and smartphones, wind turbines and solar panels are high-tech devices whose production demands a smattering of metals and minerals from across the periodic table and the planet.
Steven Seagal and DJ Khaled have taught us that if a celebrity endorses a cryptocurrency project, you should immediately assume it might be a scam. But William Shatner seems to be backing a pretty interesting crypto-mining initiative.
Modern technology wouldn’t work without trace amounts of bizarrely-named metals that occupy obscure positions on the periodic table. They’re called rare earths, but there’s a near-limitless supply on the ocean floor—if only we could access it. This week, Japanese scientists are reigniting hopes that we’ll be able to…
In President Trump’s recent State of the Union, millions of listeners heard him tout his love for “beautiful, clean coal,” something that, as The New York Times editorial board noted, “remains a mirage” for those of us living within the confines of reality.
The latest nasty security scourge plaguing the internet is cryptojacking. By running hidden code on a seemingly ordinary webpage, hackers and disreputable webmasters can highjack your CPU’s processing power in order to mine cryptocurrency, line their own pockets, and kill your performance. Opera is now the first web…
Climate change may no longer be a national security issue, but allowing private companies to dig up more rare earth minerals now is.
It’s one thing to wake up and discover that you missed the boat on a cryptocurrency boom that’s making a handful of people very wealthy. It’s another thing to find out that your computer is making someone else rich while it gives you poor performance and jacks up your electricity bill. With the spread of…
EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s crusade against environmental regulations claimed another victim on Friday, when the agency announced it would not require mining companies to prove they have the financial assets to pay for cleaning up their sites.
A new study has determined that mining-related forest loss caused roughly 10 percent of all Amazon deforestation between 2005 and 2015. That’s a much higher number than expected, and it highlights how damage from mining spreads far beyond the confines of leases granted by the Brazilian government.
Donald Trump loves a good deal. And sitting in Afghanistan, much of it in Taliban-controlled regions, there’s a doozy: deposits of rare-earth minerals once estimated to be worth $1 trillion. So the president is considering keeping troops in the country so that they can blaze the way to the country’s untapped natural…
With the meteoric rise in popularity of Ethereum, cryptocurrencies and blockchains are back in the news again. Graphics card prices have soared with the promise that those who have the computers and know-how to do some serious mining can take home huge sums in a Bitcoin-like gold rush to snatch up as much virtual…
There are lots of places to go off-road mountain biking if you’re looking for a cheap thrill (or the chance to break your neck). But one of the most dangerous has to be riding into an abandoned mine shaft. If your flashlight dies as you’re pedalling deep into the earth, you’re probably screwed.
Autonomous vehicle technology is still in its infancy, which means that most self-driving vehicles still have a way for humans to take over when needed. But as Komatsu demonstrates with a design for a new autonomous dump truck, in some cases there are real advantages to eliminating humans altogether.
Last week, strange images of a river that had turned blood red emerged out of Russia. Now satellite images show that the red waters run much further through the area—and it’s been happening for decades.
Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, is sinking. In fact, by 2050, most of its structures will have collapsed into the iron mines below it. So engineers have embarked upon an ambitious project to move Kiruna—along with its 20,000 residents—two miles to the east. A new documentary explains exactly how they plan to…
As if the Great Barrier Reef needed more terrible news, the Queensland government issued permits this week for a controversial new coal mine that marine biologists fear could choke out portions of the reef with pollution.
The largest great apes on Earth have suffered a “catastrophic” population collapse over the past twenty years, according to a report published today by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Grauer’s gorilla, a subspecies found only in the lawless eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, is a victim of the same brutal civil…
All these rich greens usually mean vegetation, but this is an arid, salty land almost totally inhospitable to plants. Instead, those are the markers of a brine rich in minerals, concentrated as the water evaporates.
No one has managed to pluck valuable minerals from an asteroid quite yet, but when they do, the legal framework will be firmly in place: earlier today, President Obama signed the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSLCA) into law.
