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In the late 1970s, the mining industry dried up at the isolated mountain town of Nichitsu in Japan's Saitama prefecture. Residents began to move away, leaving entire houses filled with possessions to time and the elements. Nichitsu has since become a hotspot for urban exploration. The above video is a tour of the town from late 2009, but know that people are still making the pilgrimage. More »
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Rare earth elements like yttrium are difficult to extract from the ground, but they're crucial ingredients in flat screens and consumer electronics. Now a group of researchers have discovered massive deposits of these elements in mud on the deep sea floor. They believe we could start mining ocean mud to build more smart phones. More »
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The search for alien intelligence has mostly centered on waiting to hear any interstellar radio signals, but we might now have a way to see aliens as well. We just need to look for mega-engineering projects on alien asteroid belts. More »
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Photographer Hugh Symonds recently got in touch with a series of images called Terra Amamus, or "dirt we like," in his translation, exploring mining operations in Cornwall. More »
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Fossil fuels aren't the only vital resource we're running out of - our once mighty helium reserves are dwindling, and the price of the gas has already skyrocketed. The US reserves could be depleted in less than 20 years, and the entire Earth could run out helium by the end of this century, which could cripple industry. Thankfully, the Sun gives off an endless supply of the stuff - and the Moon is the best place to go get it. More »
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The Moon is likely home to lots of rare elements that are vital to new energy technologies and national security. Considering Earth's mineral reserves are running out and countries are restricting access, could lunar mining be our only hope? More »
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Photographer Jim Lo Scalzo has captured the scorched earth beauty of America's coal country. In the photo montage "Ghosts in the Hollow," Scalzo navigates through fog, Centralia fumes, and old coal sluices. No wonder The Road was filmed out there. More »
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Helium is a noble gas, so it doesn't react chemically with anything. It doesn't solidify at Earth's atmospheric pressure. As soon as it is released, it streams away from earth. How is it packaged up and used to fill balloons? More »
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The platinum group metals are crucial to electronics, massively expensive, and extremely rare on this planet. But on asteroids? A single one holds billions of pounds of these metals - and that could start the era of private space exploration. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5590330&view=rss&microfeed=true Apparently the word "fracking" isn't just a Battlestar Galactica curse that means sexytime. It's also a term that comes from mining, and refers to an unregulated (in the US) practice of pumping chemical-laced liquids underground at high pressure to help bring gasses to the surface. Sounds scary. Apparently people living in the vicinity of frack operations have found that it dramatically affects aquifers, messing with water pressure and making shower water mildly toxic. via Treehugger More »
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So you already know about autonomous aerial vehicles being used in combat and surveillance — they're little planes that look almost like toys. Not so with the next generation of autonomous vehicles. A group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon have just won a contract to create a robotic system that would make this badass 797B Caterpillar mining vehicle into an autonomous hulk with no driver on board. This is clearly one of Skynet's minions in the making. More »
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Dead Space, a new game from Electronic Arts, brings parasitic "we want to kill you, kill you, kill you" aliens back into fashion just in time for next Halloween. In the far future, humans have depleted all of the natural resources on Earth, so private corporations begin sending out enormous ships called "Planetcrackers" that carve off enormous chunks of planets, and then mine them down to their bare essentials. Of course, as often happens in these games, this pisses off an "ancient and malevolent force" who decides to start unleashing hell. In space. More »
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Somewhere between the Eagle from Space: 1999 and the Resurrection Ship from Battlestar Galactica lies Oliver Scholl's conceptual design for a space carrier, from for the movie Moon 44. While it seems to be an unwritten rule that designers need to stick sharp spires on one end of a ship, and massive engines on the other which don't really matter outside of gravity, the piece fills the gap between usefulness and artistry. Click through for more info. More »
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