News
Inside the Audacious Plan to Bag Asteroids and Drag Them Into Near-Orbit for Mining
2+ hour, 14+ min ago (1011+ words) A wild new plan aims to snag asteroids and drag them into Earth's orbit The aerospace industry has a new, highly ambitious (some might say crazy) plan for securing off-world resources: catching a 100-ton asteroid in a giant inflatable bag…...
Massive Underground Salt Caverns Could Be the Unexpected Solution to Solving the Global Clean Energy Crisis
2+ week, 2+ day ago (1664+ words) From health spas to film storage, salt mine caverns have been put to use in surprising ways'and they're now poised to contribute to the generation and storage of clean energy. The river had also begun to seep into the'Praid salt…...
Helium-3 Could Be the Most Valuable Resource in Space and Nations Are Now Racing to Mine It on the Moon
4+ mon, 2+ week ago (684+ words) Could the lunar surface hold the key to clean energy'and a new geopolitical order? The Moon is drawing new attention'not for space exploration, but for resource extraction. A rare isotope called helium-3, embedded in its surface dust, has become a…...
A Diamond Found in Botswana May Be the Rarest of Its Kind Found to Date
4+ mon, 3+ week ago (552+ words) Scientists say the pink-and-clear diamond likely formed in two separate geological events. Many a special diamond has been unearthed in Botswana, but this one is something else. A diamond split cleanly in two'one half a soft pink, the other perfectly…...
U.S. Mine Waste Contains Enough Critical Minerals and Rare Earths to Easily End Imports. But Tapping into These Resources Is Anything but Easy
4+ mon, 4+ week ago (741+ words) The rocks we discard hold the clean energy minerals we need most. Most U.S. metal mines are built to dig for one or two things: copper, iron, or in some places maybe gold. But here's the thing " when these mining companies…...
‘We Are Just Waiting to Die’: Mining Activists Targeted as South Africa Delays Energy Transition
4+ mon, 4+ week ago (425+ words) At a Johannesburg hearing, activists said South Africa's coal and iron mining industries are using violence and intimidation to silence communities resisting land grabs. Environmental justice activists have spoken out against coal and iron mining in South Africa, telling a…...
This 3,000-Year-Old Workshop in Georgia May Explain How the Iron Age Began
5+ mon, 2+ week ago (784+ words) An ancient copper workshop may reveal how the first iron smelters worked. This was like a hack gone wrong'or right, depending on your perspective. By experimenting with hematite, Bronze Age metallurgists set the stage for one of the biggest technological…...
Meet the world's rarest mineral. It was found only once
7+ mon, 3+ week ago (406+ words) A single gemstone from Myanmar holds the title of Earth's rarest mineral. Deep in the Myanmar Mogok region, a tiny reddish-orange crystal sat unnoticed. To the untrained eye, it seemed like many other stones'polished by water, overlooked by miners seeking…...
The Race to the Bottom: Japan Is Set to Start Testing Deep-Sea Mining
8+ mon, 2+ day ago (768+ words) Home " Environment " World Problems There's a big hidden cost to this practice. Japan is preparing to stir a sleeping world. The goal isn't oil or gas " it's mud. Mud that's packed with the rare earth metals powering our digital and…...
No Mercury, No Cyanide: This is the Safest and Greenest Way to Recover Gold from E-waste
8+ mon, 2+ week ago (862+ words) A pool cleaner and a spongy polymer can turn used and discarded electronic items into a treasure trove of gold. Many electronic items you use daily, including your laptops, chargers, and smartphones, contain a tiny amount of gold. This is…...