Credit: NIOZ, Kim Sauter
During ice ages, the global mean sea level falls because large amounts sea water are stored in the form of huge continental glaciers. Until now, mathematical models of the last ice age could not reconcile the height of the sea level and the thickness of the glacier masses: the so-called Missing Ice Problem. With new calculations that take into account crustal, gravitational and rotational perturbation of the solid Earth, an international team of climate researchers has succeeded in resolving the discrepancy, among them Dr. Paolo Stocchi from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ). The study, now published in the journal
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IMAGE: At an old explosives storehouse on Monogram Mesa just east of the Utah border, home to numerous different uranium and vanadium mines. view more
Credit: Isabel Barton
Anyone who s seen an old cartoon or film about mining knows the image of a sooty man making his way through a dark tunnel. When his lantern lights upon a brilliant diamond or a hunk of gold, he hacks away at the rock until the precious mineral is free.
In today s world, of course, it s a lot more complicated than that. Minerals hosting important metals like cobalt, copper, uranium and vanadium are thoroughly embedded in less valuable rock, and extracting the metals requires knowing the properties of the minerals and surrounding rock, as well as a long list of tools and processes. As the world moves toward sustainable technologies ranging from solar panels and windmills to electric vehicles, mining the material to build these technologies is more important than ever.