Tag: heavy metals

Industrial Waste Can Turn Planet-Warming Carbon Dioxide Into Stone

sciencehabit writes: Every year, mining and industrial activity generates billions of tons of slurries, gravel, and other wastes that have a high pH. These alkaline wastes, which sit either behind fragile dams or heaped in massive piles, present a threat to people and ecosystems. But alkaline wastes could also help the world avert climate disaster. Reacting these wastes with carbon dioxide…

Laser-sculpted aluminium purifies water with the power of sunlight

A black panel of aluminium created by lasers can purify water containing human waste and heavy metals to drinkable standards, using just sunlight Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2248683-laser-sculpted-aluminium-purifies-water-with-the-power-of-sunlight/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Iron is everywhere in Earth’s vicinity, suggest two decades of Cluster data

Using over 18 years of data from ESA’s Cluster mission, scientists have mapped the heavy metals in the space surrounding Earth, finding an unexpected distribution and prevalence of iron and shedding light on the composition of our cosmic environment. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-03-iron-earth-vicinity-decades-cluster.html…

Simulation of dwarf galaxy reveals different routes for strontium enrichment

Simulations of a dwarf galaxy by RIKEN astrophysicists have revealed the various processes by which moderately heavy metals such as strontium are birthed. They have found that at least four kinds of stars are needed to explain the observed abundance of these metals in dwarf galaxies. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-01-simulation-dwarf-galaxy-reveals-routes.html…

Stellar heavy metals can trace history of galaxies

Astronomers have cataloged signs of nine heavy metals in the infrared light from supergiant and giant stars. New observations based on this catalog will help researchers to understand how events like binary neutron star mergers have affected the chemical composition and evolution of our own Milky Way Galaxy and other galaxies. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-01-stellar-heavy-metals-history-galaxies.html…

IBM Research Created a New Battery That May Outperform Lithium-Ion, Doesn’t Use Conflict Minerals

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: [S]cientists at IBM Research have developed a new battery whose unique ingredients can be extracted from seawater instead of mining. The problems with the design of current battery technologies like lithium-ion are well known, we just tend to turn a blind eye when it means our smartphones can run for a full day…

Thousands of Ships Fitted With ‘Cheat Devices’ To Divert Poisonous Pollution Into Sea

Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler aren’t the only companies using “cheat devices” to get around environmental legislation. According to The Independent, “global shipping companies have spent billions rigging vessels with ‘cheat devices’ that circumvent new environmental legislation by dumping pollution into the sea instead of the air.” From the report: More than $12 billion has been spent on the devices, known as…

Meet WASP-121b, a hot ‘heavy metal’ exoplanet

For the first time, heavy metal gases like magnesium and iron have been detected floating away from an exoplanet, a planet orbiting a distant sun. Why? Because the planet – which is about as big as Jupiter – is orbiting perilously close to its star. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/wasp-121b-exoplanet-football-shaped-heavy-metal…

Distant ‘heavy metal’ gas planet is shaped like a football

The scorching hot exoplanet WASP-121b may not be shredding any heavy metal guitar riffs, but it is sending heavy metals such as iron and magnesium into space. The distant planet’s atmosphere is so hot that metal is vaporizing and escaping the planet’s gravitational pull. The intense gravity of the planet’s host star has also deformed the sizzling planet into a football…