Earth's Limited Supply of Metals Raises Concern

Actually, the

- - Rex Burkheimer WM Automotive Fort Worth TX

wayne mak wrote:

What we really need is a device, perhaps nanobots or a miniature black-hole (or a combination of the two), which is fed garbage and it spits out elemental matter. Then there'd be no resource shortage ever... only an energy shortage.

Might as well wish for a Good fairy with a magic wand :)

Thars Gold in them thar Asteroids!

H.

The earth might covet Harold's supply, or at least his methodology.

Where's all that stuff going- somebody shooting it out into space?

I wish to report that the earth's core is made of almost pure nickel-iron alloy, so the supply of iron from which to make our iron toys is assured. All we have to do is to dig a thousand miles straight down.

Joe Gwinn

If Tom Swift Jr. could do it with his "Atomic Earth Blaster", so can we (eventually).

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

"new" theory there's a natural atomic reactor at the center of the nickel-iron core.

It's an interesting theory. I haven't seen it in Science or Nature yet. I don't doubt that it's controversial - almost everything significant in Earth Science starts out that way. It will probably take at least ten years to confirm or refute,

Joe Gwinn

Or a reboot of the entire universe. ;)

No, it's rusting in the form of steel cars, metal structures, bridges, etc.

It's burning in the form of sodium-vapor streetlamps, solid rocket fuel, refinery operations, etc.

One of the primary laws of physics is that matter cannot be created or destroyed... so the metals aren't going anywhere, only being converted into stuff which is unusable.

I believe this theory. How else could the core stay so hot after millions of years without an internal reaction?

But we are not massive enought to rate a micro-dot black hole at the center of the atomic core. pity.

This ultimate recycling machine has been proposed in physics research and may have been mentioned in sci.physics.research. It's a Large Mass Spectrometer, binning vaporized osmium, boron, carbon, copper, and all other elements into bins as the charged atoms (ions) fly past The Big Ass Magnet. Some designs operate out in space.

Doug

By the decay of radioactive elements in the core. All current theories are one form or another of this; no chain-reaction fission is involved. It turns out that one doesn't need much radioactive decay to account for the net power flow. This will be the big problem for the core-is-a-reactor theories, to prove (without peeking) that the power comes from fission versus decay.

joe Gwinn

Interesting. Can I ask where those facts are from? Not that I fear we're running out of metal any time soon, (the media is saying we're all gonna die from bird flu...) but it's good to know the facts. Look at Mars for instance... that would have made an epic planet to mine iron from, except it all rusted!

Well, I know for sure the iron is still there, it just has to be extracted a little differently!