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THE American space agency is planning to send a spacecraft to a lump of metal in space worth quadrillions of dollars. The 200km-wide asteroid is currently orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. It is made up of various precious metals such as iron, nickel and gold. Experts believe the iron alone in the rock would be worth $10,000 quadrillion – enough to cause the world’s economy, worth $73.7 trillion, to promptly collapse altogether.

A bronze buckle and a cylindrical metal bead found in Alaska are the first hard evidence of trade between Asia and the indigenous peoples of the North American Arctic, centuries before contact with Europeans, archaeologists say. An analysis of the artifacts has shown that they were smelted in East Asia out of lead, copper, and tin, before finding their way to an indigenous village some 700 years ago.

This is my first attempt at making truly brutal death metal. I think I got the brutal part right. (And yes, the Plaguefather in question is Nurgle of Warhammer / Warhammer 40,000 fame.) For a free download of "Plaguefather," click here, and then click on the Download icon.

When a band that has been around for more than 40 years goes on the road, fans have to be prepared for the possibility that this go-round may be the last. While AC/DC isn’t officially calling this a farewell tour, the fact that singer Brian Johnson had to leave the tour after a doctor said he was risking total hearing loss means it’s unlikely he’ll take the stage with the band again. Johnson’s departure follows co-founder Malcolm Young departure in 2014 because he is suffering from dementia. That same year, drummer Phil Rudd was arrested for threatening to kill someone...

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials refuse to answer two questions surrounding the August 2015 Gold King Mine spill that would help resolve issues uncovered by a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation. TheDCNF reported numerous contradictions in the EPA’s explanation of how and why it intentionally breached Colorado’s Gold King Mine, releasing 880,000 pounds of dangerous metals and mining waste into drinking water for three states and the Navajo Nation. Yet, the EPA refused to clarify those contradictions and instead disregarded TheDCNF’s findings and clung to its original story. First, the EPA ignored the conflicts of interest surrounding the “independent” investigation...

At left, a deformed sample of pure metal; at right, the strong new metal made of magnesium with silicon carbide nanoparticles. Each central micropillar is about 4 micrometers across. Credit: UCLA Scifacturing Laboratory ============================================================================================================= A team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has created a super-strong yet light structural metal with extremely high specific strength and modulus, or stiffness-to-weight ratio. The new metal is composed of magnesium infused with a dense and even dispersal of ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles. It could be used to make lighter airplanes, spacecraft, and cars, helping to...

Can you imagine a future where your car is fueled by iron powder instead of gasoline? Metal powders, produced using clean primary energy sources, could provide a more viable long-term replacement for fossil fuels than other widely discussed alternatives, such as hydrogen, biofuels or batteries, according to a study in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Applied Energy. "Technologies to generate clean electricity -- primarily solar and wind power -- are being developed rapidly; but we can't use that electricity for many of the things that oil and gas are used for today, such as transportation and global energy...

Airplane maker Boeing has unveiled what it calls the "The Lightest Metal Ever"—called microlattice, the material is a construct that is 99.99 per cent air. It has been developed by Boeing's HRL Laboratories along with colleagues at the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. The material has been developed as a way to reduce weight on airplanes or even rockets—a paper describing the development of the material was written by the team and published in the journal Science back in 2011—though the researchers have not yet revealed what sort of changes have been made since that time....

Eric Buabeng, told Starr Fm that he found the ring by the roadside on his way home from church in November 2014 and picked it up. Buabeng said he wore the ring on his right index finger when he got home and felt the ring tightening up his finger.

Credit: Dr Robert Williams =============================================================================================================================================== Researchers from the MQ Photonics Research Centre joined with fiber laser experts from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena, Germany to demonstrate a diamond laser 20 times more powerful than previous diamond lasers. Average power levels were less than 20 Watts, with the new laser now providing up to 380 Watts of output power – the equivalent of approximately 400,000 laser pointers and enough power to easily cut through steel. High-power diamond lasers are well-suited to applications that require beaming power over long distances, such as optical communications in space,...

Using powerful computer simulations, researchers from Brown University have identified a material with a higher melting point than any known substance. The computations, described in the journal Physical Review B (Rapid Communications), showed that a material made with just the right amounts of hafnium, nitrogen, and carbon would have a melting point of more than 4,400 kelvins (7,460 degrees Fahrenheit). That's about two-thirds the temperature at the surface of the sun, and 200 kelvins higher than the highest melting point ever recorded experimentally. The experimental record-holder is a substance made from the elements hafnium, tantalum, and carbon (Hf-Ta-C). But these...

And it could be the key to understanding one of the biggest mysteries in physics today - high-temperature superconductors.An international team of scientists has announced the discovery of a new state of matter in a material that appears to be an insulator, superconductor, metal and magnet all rolled into one, saying that it could lead to the development of more effective high-temperature superconductors. Why is this so exciting? Well, if these properties are confirmed, this new state of matter will allow scientists to better understand why some materials have the potential to achieve superconductivity at a relativity high critical temperature...

It’s on! Iron Maiden revealed earlier this year that they were holding off on releasing a new album while Bruce Dickinson dealt with a cancerous tumor. But Dickinson has received treatment and got the “all clear” from doctors, and now fans can get ready for Maiden’s new album, The Book of Souls, coming on Sept. 4.

A team of researchers from the University of Twente has found a way to 3D print structures of copper and gold, by stacking microscopically small metal droplets. These droplets are made by melting a thin metal film using a pulsed laser. Their work is published on Advanced Materials. 3D printing is a rapidly advancing field, that is sometimes referred to as the 'new cornerstone of the manufacturing industry'. However, at present, 3D printing is mostly limited to plastics. If metals could be used for 3D printing as well, this would open a wide new range of possibilities. Metals conduct electricity...

Researchers at Japan's Tohoku University are making a bold claim: an entirely new state of matter. The team, led by Kosmas Prassides, says they've created what's called a Jahn-Teller metal by inserting rubidium, a strange alkali metal element, into buckyballs, a pure carbon structure which has a spherical shape from a series of interlocking polygons (think of the Epcot Center, but in microscopic size.) Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Buckyballs, which are somewhat related to other supermaterials like graphene and carbon nanotubes, are already known for their superconductive capabilities. Here, while combining buckyballs and rubidium, the researchers created a...

A Mexican archeologist hunting for a royal tomb in a deep, dark tunnel beneath a towering pre-Aztec pyramid has made a discovery that may have brought him a step closer: liquid mercury. In the bowels of Teotihuacan, a mysterious ancient city that was once the largest in the Americas, Sergio Gomez this month found "large quantities" of the silvery metal in a chamber at the end of a sacred tunnel sealed for nearly 1,800 years. "It's something that completely surprised us," Gomez said at the entrance to the tunnel below Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent, about 30 miles (50...

When I think of any kind of liquid metal form changing shape and moving around on its own accord, I can’t help but conjure up images of the T-1000 robot assassin from the movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Now scientists have made a little drop of metal that’s able to propel itself through liquid and change shape to fit through a narrow passage. Although this little drop of liquid metal is no shapeshifting Nanomorph, it does have some fascinating properties that could one day be used to develop new methods for delivering drugs through blood vessels. To make the liquid...

Almost ever electronic device made today except some for the military have solder joints that contain no lead. This is an effort to save our groundwater and our public health. The fact that the lead has been generally replaced with silver or bismuth, both of which are actually greater health risks than lead, well we’ll leave that one for Ralph Nader. The longer-term trend is toward all-tin connections, anyway, but they don’t work very well, either. Costs have gone up for computers with lead-free solder, mean time between failures (MTBF) has gone down (in this case down is bad) and...

Myles Udland November 30, 2014 On Sunday night, gold was down more than 4% to as low as $1,143 an ounce after voters in Switzerland on Sunday rejected a measure that would have required the Swiss National Bank to increase its gold reserves from 8% to 20% of its holdings. The vote failed by a margin of 78%-22%. In addition the drop in gold, crude oil prices are resuming their tumble, and the price of other precious metals — silver and platinum — were also down sharply. Silver futures were down 12% early Sunday night and platinum futures were down...

In yet another move which may send shivers down the spines of law enforcement agencies around the world, while at the same time exciting techies and firearm advocates, Solid Concepts has revealed yet another 3D printed metal gun. Just under a year ago, the company, which has since been acquired by 3D printing giant Stratasys, revealed the world’s very first 3D printed metal handgun, the 1911. Although there had been a number of interesting plastic firearms 3D printed up until that time, this metal firearm was the first capable of shooting several rounds of ammunition flawlessly. In fact the original...