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Humanity Can Render Zinc Extinct
Johnny C:
wtf
--- Quote ---I’ve understood the idea of extinction since I was a small boy, staring goggle-eyed at the dinosaur skeletons in New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. Bad things happen—a climate change, perhaps, or the appearance on the scene of very efficient new predators—and whole species of animals and plants vanish, never to return. But elements? The extinction of entire elements, the disappearance of actual chunks of the periodic table, is not something I’ve ever given a moment’s thought to. Except now, thanks to Armin Reller of the University of Augsburg.
...
Gallium’s atomic number is 31. It’s a blue-white metal first discovered in 1831, and has certain unusual properties, like a very low melting point and an unwillingness to oxidize, that make it useful as a coating for optical mirrors, a liquid seal in strongly heated apparatus, and a substitute for mercury in ultraviolet lamps. It’s also quite important in making the liquid-crystal displays used in flat-screen television sets and computer monitors.
As it happens, we are building a lot of flat-screen TV sets and computer monitors these days. Gallium is thought to make up 0.0015 percent of the Earth’s crust and there are no concentrated supplies of it. We get it by extracting it from zinc or aluminum ore or by smelting the dust of furnace flues. Dr. Reller says that by 2017 or so there’ll be none left to use...
--- End quote ---
God dang.
David_Dovey:
No Zinc, come back zinc, ziiiiiinc
ZINC!
KvP:
Shit, what am I going to ingest when I get aphthous ulcers?
I demand a declared state of global emergency!
Ozymandias:
Guys.
I think you're missing the point.
The point is maximum profit. If we act now, we can buy all the zinc. And then we are kings.
David_Dovey:
...in our missile bunker.
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