Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Humanity Can Render Zinc Extinct
Johnny C:
--- Quote from: Boro_Bandito on 25 Jul 2008, 10:15 ---All this means is that we need to kick our space mining operations into high gear.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: Vendetagainst on 25 Jul 2008, 13:35 ---We can run out of a natural source, but because our uses for elements are almost entirely chemical or physical it would be virtually impossible for us to run out.
--- End quote ---
Does anyone know if the methods of synthesizing elements like these are in existence and, if so, whether or not they're sustainable or efficient? The article mentions the furnace dust process.
Vendetagainst:
synthesis of any element is usually very expensive with a very small yield*, and because zinc is comparatively much larger than the elements nuclear chemists** usually experiment with (hydrogen is particularly good for this) it would become that much more difficult to accomplish.
*Enriched Uranium is the only significant expection, though still very expensive it can undergo fission with greater ease than other elements, though this is only strictly practical in nuclear power/explosive context
**Experimentally, not referring to nuclear fission/fusion
Tom:
Stars only produce every element until the get to Iron, when they do they don't do it for very long and will soon collapse inward and form things like neutron stars or go supernova sending all the elements they synthesised from H to Fe out the fusing variable amounts of said elements into larger elements. Iron is 26, Copper is 29 and Zinc is 30 so it's not like their being asked to synthesise Silver, 47, or Gold, 79.
Vendetagainst:
--- Quote ---Even zinc, commonplace old zinc that is alloyed with copper to make brass, and which the United States used for ordinary one-cent coins when copper was in short supply in World War II . . .
--- End quote ---
Zinc makes up ninety-something percent of the composition in pennies now. I know that wasn't the point of the article but stuff like that gets on my nerves :|
@not robert
plus the possibility of "harvesting" anything besides radiation from stars is far beyond anything we're capable of right now or in the near future.
Tom:
Yeah but I was talking about synthesising it....
Even if we could, we'd have to wait a long time. Empires will've risen and fallen by the time that Charlton Heston gets back.
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