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…
I had only been in West Virginia for a day when Josh Sword, the head of the state AFL-CIO, told me casually that a revolution is coming. He is not a particularly radical guy. He was just giving an honest, matter-of-fact reading of the political situation. “I don’t know how bad things have to get. In West Virginia, it…
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.
Corporations aren’t inherently evil, they’re only as greedy as the humans behind them. It’s the same thing with robots. Robots have no emotions—they’re just a pile of metal, screws and circuits—but they will be as mean, selfish, and avaricious as the people programming them.
President Obama is in Alaska this week. There, he plans to hike up a glacier, then shoot an episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls. That should be fun. Elsewhere, REI has discovered Instagram and LA’s own millennial miner is in legal trouble. This is What’s New Outside.
Our current era may go down in history as the century of space exploration and off-Earth resource exploitation. But there are still considerable policy hurdles to overcome in terms of how we regulate such activities. As we turn our eyes to the skies, we should also look south to Antarctica to gain some insight into…
This time of year kayaks and inner tubes crowd the crystal-clear waters of the Animas River, which flows through the western Colorado city of Durango. Last night, the river was quickly abandoned as one million gallons of wastewater seeping from a local mine slowly trickled downstream, eventually coloring the entire…
You’ve probably heard a bit about rare Earth elements. They’ve got unpronounceable names like ytterbium and praseodymium, and they’re found in nearly ever piece of tech you own. Despite their value, we’re do a piss poor job recycling them. But chemists are now hoping to change that.
Diamonds you’re familiar with. Pandanus candelabrum, not so much. And until recently, botanists didn’t pay much attention to this rare, palm-like plant from West Africa either. But the discovery that P. candelabrum grows only over rock that may harbor diamonds has vaulted the plant out of obscurity.
Rare earth elements are hard-to-find metals that we need for batteries, solar cells and electronics. These days, they’re mostly mined and processed in China. But it wasn’t always so. The history of rare earth elements is surprising, and some of it even takes place in America’s backyard. In fact, there is still a rare…
If you ever wondered how much land mass had to be moved to produce that diamond engagement ring, this series of photos should help put things in perspective.
It’s not something anyone likes to think about, but your smartphone—or your laptop, or the battery in your hybrid car—created a huge amount of toxic and radioactive waste. And now we know what happens to that waste in the long term. It returns to the earth, mingles with sludge, and finds its way into clay pots.
