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Copper -- the stuff of pennies and tea kettles -- is also one of the few metals that can turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels with relatively little energy. When fashioned into an electrode and stimulated with voltage, copper acts as a strong catalyst, setting off an electrochemical reaction with carbon dioxide that reduces the greenhouse gas to methane or methanol. Various researchers around the world have studied copper’s potential as an energy-efficient means of recycling carbon dioxide emissions in powerplants: Instead of being released into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide would be circulated through a copper catalyst and turned into...

TORONTO, ON – According to a new study by geologists at the University of Toronto and the University of Maryland, the wealth of some minerals that lie in the rock beneath the Earth's surface may be extraterrestrial in origin. "The extreme temperature at which the Earth's core formed more than four billion years ago would have completely stripped any precious metals from the rocky crust and deposited them in the core," says James Brenan of the Department of Geology at the University of Toronto and co-author of the study published in Nature Geoscience on October 18. "So, the next question...

There is a growing body of evidence now to support the theory that Western enviro-pillaging is leading to the flip-flop of the Earth's magnetic field. The acclaimed Indian science journal Jonwar Chodu recently published a controversial piece denouncing the Western World's mining of metal in 3rd world countries. But not for the normal reasons of hegemonic multinational imperialism - itself a good reason to stop all this horrible mining... No, this time it was for a reason far worse. You see, when you take metals from one part of the world, depleting them from whole regions almost entirely, and then...

Scientists have proposed a radical new model for the make-up of the Earth's core. The study may explain a longstanding puzzle about the most inaccessible part of our planet. It suggests that differences between the east and west hemispheres of the core are explained by the way iron atoms pack together. ... Lying more than 5,000km beneath our feet, at the centre of the Earth, the core is beyond the reach of direct investigation. Broadly speaking, it consists of a solid sphere of metal sitting within a liquid outer core. The inner core started to solidify more than a billion...

Ultra high precision analyses of some of the oldest rock samples on Earth by researchers at the University of Bristol provides clear evidence that the planet's accessible reserves of precious metals are the result of a bombardment of meteorites more than 200 million years after Earth was formed. During the formation of Earth, molten iron sank to its centre to make the core. This took with it the vast majority of the planet's precious metals -- such as gold and platinum. In fact, there are enough precious metals in the core to cover the entire surface of Earth with a...

A global clash of nations is underway in full gear. The time is finally right. The urgency is acute. The banking system insolvency is widespread. The illiquidity has reached the surface. The geopolitical chessboard has busy movements of many pieces, even with a delayed check in Ukraine after a devious capture of the Cyprus castle but not the Syrian knight. The Saudi support via OPEC for the Petro-Dollar has fallen out of view, dragging its pummeled chin on the desert sands. The Eastern superpowers are marching arm in arm, ready to challenge the West. It seems the Western leaders, in...

Last week, the big story was how bankers use HFT (High Frequency Trading) algorithmic software not only to rig markets but also to commit theft on a daily basis (Frontrunning, like Quantitative Easing, is just fancy Wall Street lingo to disguise its true meaning of theft). Though many in the public blogosphere expressed shock that stock markets are rigged and that regulators like the Securities Exchange Commission willingly allow this theft to occur, the only thing shocking about this story was how long it took this story to reach the mainstream and that people were crediting Michael Lewis with uncovering...

Last week, St. Louis Fed Director of Research David Andolfatto released a presentation on Bitcoin, becoming one of the most prominent central bank officials to study the cryptocurrency. We caught up with Andolfatto to ask him about why he put this deck together, where he thinks Bitcoin is going, and whether he personally has anything invested in it. Business Insider: What was the genesis for this presentation? David Andolfatto: Its genesis was a blog post I'd started, addressing arguments that gold bugs frequently put forth, that gold is superior money. Of course, Bitcoin was in the news — I read...

The moon is made of far more valuable stuff than green cheese. And one man wants to capitalize on that fact. NASA, which ended America's space shuttle program in June, says it wants to privatize spaceflight. Naveen Jain, co-founder and chairman of Moon Express, Inc., wants to go a step further: He wants to privatize the moon itself. Jain's company plans to piggyback on private shuttle flights, using them to carry his lunar landers and mining platforms to the moon. "People ask, why do we want to go back to the moon? Isn't it just barren soil?" Jain told FoxNews.com....

As a child growing up in rural India in the 1960s and 1970s, Naveen Jain would gaze up at the moon and imagine a life beyond his modest surroundings. Today he's still gazing at the moon, but for far different reasons. Jain, 55, is co-founder of Moon Express, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company that's aiming to send the first commercial robotic spacecraft to the moon next year. This serial entrepreneur-he founded Internet companies Infospace and Intelius-believes that the moon holds precious metals and rare minerals that can be brought back to help address Earth's energy, health and resource challenges. Among...

Japanese Prepare For "Abenomics Failure", Scramble To Buy Physical Gold Tyler Durden 03/28/2014 10:42 -0400 As we reported yesterday, the world's most clueless prime minister, Japan's Shinzo Abe, has suddenly found himself in a "no way out" situation, with inflation for most items suddenly soaring (courtesy of exported deflation slamming Europe), without a matched increase in wages as reflected in the "surprising" tumble in household spending, which dropped 2.5% on expectations of a 0.1% increase in the month ahead of Japan's infamous sales tax hike. How does one explain this unwillingness by the public to buy worthless trinkets and non-durable...

Gold And Silver Go From Bearish To More Bearish Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014 Mar 27, 2014 - 03:16 PM GMT By: P Radomski CFA Commodities Briefly: In our opinion short speculative positions in gold (half), silver (half) and mining stocks (full) are justified from the risk/reward perspective. The decline in the precious metals sector continues, as indicated in the previous alerts. Gold, silver and mining stocks have declined once again and appear to be headed lower also today. Did yesterday’s price action change anything? Let’s take a look (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com). Today we will start with silver...

A common argument for dumping the Euro is that it is overvalued, and that the ECB (European Central Bank) is unwilling to correct this so-called “problem.” This overvaluation is regularly cited as being over 10 percent against the dollar. The Swiss central bank surrendered control of its money supply by fixing its currency at 1.2 against the Euro essentially on the notion that its currency was “overvalued.” Advocates of a Euro breakup consider that a country with its own currency can then follow an independent monetary policy ensuring a competitive exchange rate. Never mind that neither the USA nor Great...

Bellando, a former investment bank analyst at JPMorgan, is the son of John Bellando, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at Condé Nast. His brother, John, a top chief investment officer with JPMorgan, works on risk exposure valuations. Several John Bellando emails were cited during testimony at the Senate Finance Committee’s inquiry into the bank’s losses during the infamous London Whale trade fiasco. Kenneth Bellando — who grew up in Rockville Center, LI, and was a Georgetown graduate — worked as a summer analyst at JPMorgan while in school. Upon graduation in 2007, he was hired as an investment...

March. 14 (UPI) -- A Nevada man filed a criminal complaint alleging his niece stole and sold his $50,000 coin collection to reality TV's Pawn Stars, which then melted the gold down. David Walters filed the complaint with the Clark County Justice Court on Nov. 27, and by time police notified the pawn shop on Dec. 5, the gold pieces had already been melted down, Radar Online reported.

DAILY PRICE REPORT Today’s AM fix was USD 1371.00, EUR 982.30 and GBP 821.70 per ounce. Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1355.75, EUR 977.47 and GBP 817.01 per ounce.Gold rose $20.10 or 1.5% yesterday to $1,367.10/oz. Silver surged 47 cents or 2.2% to $21.28/oz.Putin and a Gold BarGold extended gains to a third session today, reaching fresh six month highs as investors hedged geopolitical risks and Chinese economic slowdown fears. Gold hit $1,375.20, its highest since September 10 and has gained 14% so far this year on global geopolitical and macroeconomic risk.A significant bond default in China and a weak...

A Manhattan trader was killed Tuesday morning by a speeding Long Island Rail Road commuter train, marking at least the seventh suicide of a financial professional this year. Edmund (Eddie) Reilly, 47, a trader at Midtown’s Vertical Group, jumped in front of an LIRR train at 6 a.m. near the Syosset train station. He was declared dead at the scene. Reilly’s identity was confirmed by Salvatore Arena, an LIRR spokesperson, who said an investigation into the incident was continuing. Passengers on the west-bound express train told MTA investigators they saw a man standing by the tracks before he jumped in...

One of our favorite japes is about the group of scientists who figure out the secret to life — a way to make a human being from nothing but dirt. When they’ve worked it all out, they are so excited they go directly to God to announce their discovery that He is no longer necessary. He appears a bit surprised, but they offer to demonstrate. He nods. One of the scientists bends down and scoops up a fistful of dirt. “Oh, no,” God exclaims. “You’ve got to make your own dirt.” This is how we feel about bitcoins. The idea...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Gold climbed for a second session on Wednesday to its highest in 5-1/2 months, as global uncertainty over economic growth and tensions in Ukraine burnished the metal's safe-haven appeal. Weakness in equities and base metals, along with technical buying, propelled gold prices through resistance at $1,355 an ounce, traders said. Other precious metals were higher too, with silver climbing nearly 2 percent. "There is quite a lot of attention on moves in other metal markets, like base metals," said one Hong Kong-based precious metals.

A curious story, and one which should be taken with a mine of salt, has surfaced out of the pro-Russian newspaper Iskra, which reports - so far on an entirely unsubstantiated basis - that last Friday, in a mysterious operation under the cover of night, Ukraine's gold reserves were promptly loaded onboard an unmarked plane, which subsequently took the gold to the US. From the source: Tonight, around at 2:00 am, an unregistered transport plane took off took off from Boryspil airport. According to Boryspil staff, prior to the plane's appearance, four trucks and two cargo minibuses arrived at the...