Chemical elements

In arid southeastern California, just across the border from Nevada, sits the only large-scale rare-earth element mine in the Western Hemisphere. Here at Mountain Pass, rocks are dug out of a 600-foot pit in the ground, crushed, and liquified into a concentrated soup of metals that are essential for the magnets inside consumer electronics, wind turbines, and electric vehicles, or EVs.What Is Carbon Capture? With Gizmodo’s Molly Taft | TechmodoToday, that metallic soup is shipped to China, where individual rare earths are…

Popular large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are energy intensive, requiring massive server farms to provide enough data to train the powerful programs. Cooling those same data centers also makes the AI chatbots incredibly thirsty. New research suggests training for GPT-3 alone consumed 185,000 gallons (700,000 liters) of water. An average user’s conversational exchange with ChatGPT basically amounts to dumping a large bottle of fresh water out on the ground, according to the new study.…

This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.In a remote and heavily forested region of northern Maine, a critical resource in the fight against climate change has been hiding beneath the trees. In November, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, announced the discovery of rocks that are rich in rare earth elements near Pennington Mountain. A category of metals that play an essential role in technologies ranging from smartphones to wind turbines to electric…

A microscope image of the Huc enzyme.Image: Rhys GrinterWe may some day be able to produce power from thin air—all thanks to bacteria living in dirt. Microbiologists at Australia’s Monash University have identified an enzyme within a bacteria found in soil that can produce electricity using nothing but hydrogen from the atmosphere.The research, published in Nature on Wednesday, involves an enzyme called Huc, which the researchers call a “hydrogen gas scavenger” in a press release. Huc is found within the bacteria…

Professor Xiulin Ruan with the boron nitride white paint.Image: Photo: Purdue University/Jared Pike Graphics: Vicky LetaIt’s common sense: When it’s hot outside, don’t put on a dark shirt—wear white instead. A team of researchers at Purdue University has put this common knowledge to work to figure out ways to cool buildings, planes, and even cars with the world’s whitest paints.The concept of using white paint to deflect heat isn’t new. As far back as the 1970s, scientists and manufacturers had been developing whiter and…

Spitsbergen, Svalbard Islands, Norway. Photo: Sergio Pitamitz / VWPics (AP)A recent study from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate found large amounts of valuable metals and minerals on the seabed of the country’s continental shelf, Reuters reported. The rare earth metals, copper, and other materials would be a boon to Europe’s ability to produce energy transition technologies, but environmentalists are worried about the potential impacts of mining in the area.The Directorate’s study found that there were more than 40…

The latest Apple Watches have included blood oxygen sensors using green, red, and infrared LEDs, though researchers have noted for decades that such sensors routinely fail at accurately gauging blood oxygen on darker skin. Photo: Feline Lim (Getty Images)A new class action lawsuit claims the Apple Watch’s blood oxygen sensor isn’t formatted to take darker skin tones into account, which is only exacerbating the noted biases of blood sensing tech that has routinely failed to accurately gauge blood oxygen levels for Black…

Photo: Christopher Furlong (Getty Images)The Biden administration’s plans to boost manufacturing ofelectric vehicles may face a big bump in the road—and that bump is made of graphite. Both E&E News and Marketplace reported this week on how the coming electric vehicle revolution will supercharge the demand for the mineral.Graphite is a crucial component of electric vehicle batteries, used to make the anode—the part of the battery that releases electrons. When compared with other minerals used to make other parts of…

Dangerous, radioactive particles are all over an elementary school in suburban St. Louis, according to a recently published analysis by Boston Chemical Data Corp.The testing follows an earlier assessment by the Army Corps of Engineers that also found elevated levels of radiation near Jana Elementary School in Florissant, Missouri. However, the new report—which included indoor testing and more extensive samples from the school grounds—is even more startling, confirming fears of contamination.Based on dust and soil samples…

A worker carries wet cobalt at the Shinkolobwe Cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo: Schalk van Zuydam (AP)The federal government has, for the first time, included crucial raw materials needed for the clean energy transition under a list of goods that have child or forced labor in their supply chains.E&E News was the first to report on the change, which the Biden administration rolled out on Tuesday. The administration this week updated the list of goods, which it has maintained since 2006, with…