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The settlement occupants left an abundant and continuous record of seeds, legumes and other foods...By studying these archaeological layers, Professor Kennett and colleagues were able to discern the types of plants that were being collected in the warmer, humid days before the climate changed and in the cooler, drier days after the onset of what we know now as the Younger Dryas cool period.Before the impact, the inhabitants' prehistoric diet involved wild legumes and wild-type grains, and small but significant amounts of wild fruits and berries.In the layers corresponding to the time after cooling, fruits and berries disappeared and their...

AstroForge, a startup with plans to mine asteroids, is getting ready to launch the first of its two missions on Friday, of which the main objective is to test the firm’s technique for refining platinum from a sample of asteroid-like material. The startup has placed a payload on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, pre-packed with elements similar to those found in asteroids. Working in Earth’s orbit, the OrbAstro-built cubesat will attempt to vaporize and sort the materials into their elemental components. Sign Up for the Battery Metals Digest AstroForge says its vehicle Brokkr-1 aims to demonstrate the company’s refining capabilities in...

The Fremont Police Department said Monday that it shut down a recycling company buying stolen catalytic converters, putting an end to a “major pathway for criminal activity.” After a year-long investigation, the department established that the Arrow Recovery recycling company at 46025 Warm Springs Blvd. was buying stolen catalytic converters, the department said in a news release. To confirm the operation was illegal, an undercover officer sold cut catalytic converters to Arrow Recovery marked or etched with "stolen" or other markings suggesting they had been illegally obtained and the company repeatedly purchased the stolen devices. Catalytic converters have increasingly become...

More than 1500 years ago, a vast culture known as the Hopewell tradition (or Hopewell culture) stretched across what is today the eastern United States. The cause of the culture's decline has long been debated, with war and climate change two of the possibilities, but now a new avenue of inquiry has opened up: debris from a near-Earth comet. Researchers working across 11 different Hopewell archaeological sites covering three states have found unusual concentrations of iridium and platinum in their digging – telltale signs of meteorite fragments. Meanwhile, a charcoal layer in the sediment suggests an intense period of high...

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati have found evidence of a cosmic cataclysm 1,500 years that may be responsible for the downfall of the Hopewell Culture. The Hopewell Culture was a widely dispersed set of pre-Columbian Native American populations connected by a common network of trade routes from 100 BC to AD 500 in the Middle Woodland period. The researchers found evidence of a cosmic airburst at 11 Hopewell archaeological sites in three states stretching across the Ohio River Valley in the United States, which rained debris down into the Earth’s atmosphere creating a fiery explosion around 1,500 years ago...

Along with locations in North and South America, Greenland, Western Europe, and the Middle East, we can now add southern Africa to the list of places where scientists have uncovered evidence of a calamitous event that happened 12,800 years ago. This evidence of a 12,800-year-old platinum spike in Africa is the first to be found on the continent, and it’s yet further evidence in support of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. According to this theory, either a comet or asteroid struck Earth during the Pleistocene, triggering an impact winter that saw temperatures plummet around the globe. The associated loss of...

The Yomiuri Shimbun Japan has obtained exclusive mineral exploration rights for rare metals and other resources on the seabed about 600 kilometers southeast of Tokyo’s Minami-Torishima island. It is the first time in 26 years that Japan has obtained mineral exploration rights on the high seas. In an announcement Saturday, the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry said it would begin full-fledged exploration next fiscal year at the earliest. To obtain exclusive exporation rights, a nation must first gain the approval of the United Nations’ International Seabed Authority. The U.N. authority gave its approval Friday, and the government is expected to...

May 8 (UPI) -- The study of a unique crystalline material, composed of aluminum and platinum atoms, has revealed a pair of electronic properties that have never been seen before. The atoms in the new materials are crystallized in a special pattern, with each row offset from the other. The pattern creates a spiral staircase of aluminum and platinum atoms. According to the new study, published this week in the journal Nature Physics, the material's unique crystalline structure produces Rarita-Schwinger fermions in its interior and extremely long quadruple topological Fermi arcs on its surface. Rarita-Schwinger fermions are a type of...

‘...The Recording Industry Association of America told The Associated Press on Monday that the Eagles' album -- "Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975" -- is now certified 38x platinum, which means sales and streams of the album have reached 38 million copies...’

A galactic gold rush has been predicted for some time, with experts saying teams will race against each other to collect precious metals from space rocks. Earlier this year, physicist Michio Kaku described asteroids as “flying gold mine[s] in outer space” that could replenish any metal shortage on Earth. Examples of valuable asteroids include one rock measuring 3,000ft across that contains $5.4 trillion worth of platinum. And now it is predicted the first trillionaire will make their fortune in outer space. PRICELESS: One asteroid contains $5.4trillion worth of platinum __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson: “The first trillionaire there will...

(Kitco News) – News that North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan has rattled world markets. Global stock indexes are lower and safe-haven assets like gold and U.S. Treasuries are higher. U.S. stock indexes are pointed toward lower openings when the New York day session begins. Gold prices hit an 11-month high overnight, as a combination of safe-haven demand and technical buying are boosting the yellow metal.

Scientists have been searching for the origin of some of the most precious metals on Earth - including gold, silver, and platinum - for almost six decades. And now we might finally have the answer. Heavy, and often valuable elements like these are called r-process elements, and they require an incredible amount of energy to produce. So far, no one's been able to explain how they came to exist in the Universe. But the discovery that an ancient dwarf galaxy called Reticulum II - about 98,000 light-years from Earth - has stars that contain a "whopping" amount of these metals...

With countless settlements documenting the rigging of every single asset class, it was only a matter of time before the regulators - some 10 years behind the curve as usual - finally cracked down on gold manipulation as well, even though as we have shown in the past, central banks in general and the Fed in particular are among the biggest gold manipulators. That said, we are confident by now nobody will be surprised that there was manipulation going on in the gold casino. In fact, ever since Germany's Bafin launched a probe into Deutsche Bank for gold and silver...

Flashing some interplanetary gold bling and sipping "space water" might sound far-fetched, but both could soon be reality, thanks to a new US law that legalizes cosmic mining.In a first, President Barack Obama signed legislation at the end of November that allows commercial extraction of minerals and other materials, including water, from asteroids and the moon. That could kick off an extraterrestrial gold rush, backed by a private aeronautics industry that is growing quickly and cutting the price of commercial space flight. The US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 says that any materials American individuals or companies find...

An asteroid worth a potential £3.5 trillion ($5.4 trillion) is due to pass by Earth on Sunday, and you can watch it live from 11pm UK time (6.30pm ET). Asteroid 2011 UW-158's fly-by will be streamed live on the internet from an observatory in the Canary Islands. The space rock has attracted the attention of asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, because it is thought to have a 100 million ton core of platinum that the company might one day want to exploit. Asteroid 2011 UW-158 will pass within 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) from Earth on Sunday - 30...

Speaker Mop & Glo made headlines for her call to investigate opponents of the Ground Zero mosque, but there was something else about her remarks that should have raised your hackles: “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she said. “How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we...

Platinum and palladium prices are dropping sharply on signs that South African mining companies are close to reaching a labor agreement that would end a four-month strike. Platinum fell $28, or 2 percent, to close at $1,400.70 an ounce. Palladium lost $29.30, or 3.6 percent, to $777.80 an ounce. …

Searching for a pot of gold? Try the center of the Earth. More than 99 percent of Earth's gold is missing—it all sank to the center of the planet billions of years ago. In fact, says geologist Bernard Wood of Macquarie University in Australia, there's enough gold in Earth's core to coat its surface in 1.5 feet of the stuff. How did it get there? Earth formed from a series of smaller planetesimals that crashed together over the course of 30 million to 40 million years. Wood deduced how much gold ought to be present in Earth's crust by comparing...

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...