Reflection v. Refraction
It was late afternoon on Christmas and I was driving west into the setting sun. It had been wet most of the day, but the rain machine had turned off for a bit, the...
Category: Technology
Going, Going… Gone?
In their continuing efforts to dismantle the United States and remove it from its traditional place as a leader in scientific research and understanding, the current administration is now taking aim at the National...
Warp Speed Now
The year was 1969, and my buddy and I — a pair of newly-minted high school graduates, full of juice and looking for a bit of excitement — decided to head to the Mojave...
Minerals and Economic Warfare, Part 2
Click here for Minerals and Economic Warfare, Part 1 It was early in the 1980s and Central Africa was again in turmoil. Very little of what transpired made it into the homes of the...
The Magic of Density
Before we get started, we need to agree on a couple bits of background information gleaned from the realm of physics (sorry, but it’s gotta be done). First, all matter is composed of tiny...
Follow the money…
Sorry. This one may stray a bit from the earth sciences, but I have to ask: How ridiculous can we be? It reminds me of the early days of the railroad, when the gauge...
Deep Sea Mining
I read an interesting article in Mother Jones (7/16/23) about mining on the deep-sea floor (aka the abyssal plain) for metallic nodules. This follows up on another article on the same site that discusses...
E-waste and rational resource management
How many of you still have your original cellphone? Not your flip-phone, I’m talking about the brick you had before that. But hey, what did happen to your first flip-phone? Or your first beeper...
Fusion and Clean Energy
The big science news of the week (possibly the decade, if not the century) comes out of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where nuclear physicists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) finally...
Talcum Power and Asbestos
I read with interest the decision by Johnson & Johnson to discontinue the sale of talc-based baby powder by 2023. While J&J has not sold talcum powder in the United States and Canada since...
