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[Johnny C]

wtf

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...

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.

[squawk]

This reminded me of the educational film on zinc that they showed in Bart's class this one time on Simpsons but I couldn't find it on youtubes.

Gallium is pretty cool, and melty, it will suck when it is gone.

[Johnny C]

The point is maximum profit. If we act now, we can buy all the zinc. And then we are kings.

GOD BLESS YOU ADAM SMITH

[Ozymandias]

I actually make all my financial decisions based on advice from RON PAUL

RON PAUL

RON PAUL

PH'NGLUI MGLW'NAFH RON PAUL TEXAS WGAH'NAGL FHTAGN

[Tom]

The title is so far from even being remotely scientifically correct. Also Robert Silverberg is wrong in saying that any element will be extinct. The only thing that's happened is that it'll be locked/tied up in other compounds and such. But yeah, apart from the whole *rawr* extinct elements *rawr*  thing, he's pretty spot on.

[IronOxide]

There's such a thing as "extinct in the wild"

Just you can pay to see it in a zoo for the next twenty years doesn't mean that it's not extinct.

[calenlass]

I figure that Zinc is definitely something that can be replaced by another element in the devices we use it in.

Certainly by the time this might occur.

Yes but not in our bodies.

[tania]

zinc is needed only in trace amounts (about 15 mg a day for adults) and is naturally occuring in a lot of foods. i think we'll be okay on that one.

[Boro_Bandito]

All this means is that we need to kick our space mining operations into high gear.

[Chesire Cat]

I loled in a cafe at Peak Zinc.

But truly just as elements never really disappear they only get tied up into other stuff.  Im sure in a few hundred years we will develop some sort of molecular universal constructor like in Deus Ex that we can just create it by mixing so Protons and Electrons with a Neutron.

*edit*

Also I think they had one in the Jetsons... And the Fifth Element

[Vendetagainst]

Elements cannot become "extinct" without undergoing nuclear changes. 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. Helium is an exception because it is so light that it literally escapes our atmosphere, and it's supreme nonreactivity renders it nonexistant as a compound. Hydrogen, despite being even lighter, does not have this problem because of it's presence in a ridiculously vast number of compounds (infinite compounds, hypothetically).  Also, we should be more worried about copper than zinc because we are already approaching peak copper and it would be harder to replace

[Johnny C]

All this means is that we need to kick our space mining operations into high gear.

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.

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]

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 . . .

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.

[Vendetagainst]

I didn't mean to suggest that anything you said was incorrect, I was just supplementing it.

Charlton Heston?

[öde]

Charlton Heston.

[StaedlerMars]

You can make elements from other elements. For example, it's pretty easy to make Gold out of Platinum (It's only taking one neutron away).

Shame Platinum is more valuable than gold.

[jhocking]

The value is in the neutron.

[johnny5]

there was a similar story recently about Sony's Playstation components using some kind of pretty rare metal, and how the demand for more Playstations drove up the price for that metal and the poor countries would use kids and slaves to mine for it.

edit: article ->http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/07/the-playstation.html

i dont know how much of it is exaggerated but it still sounds pretty bad  (i say this as i play my ps3)

[Johnny C]

Metal slaves? Solid.

[Chesire Cat]

Well now Sony doesnt have that high demand problem *badum-tsh!*

[Vendetagainst]

tantalum is mostly produced in Australia anyway, it's absurd that electronics companies should be fueling a war for something that could be obtained elsewhere.

This article reminds me of the growing act of stealing catalytic converters from cars because of their high precious metal content.

[calenlass]

Uh did you miss the bit about tantalum being refined coltan? As in, you need coltan to produce tantalum.


Tantalum is in high demand from airlines commissioning new planes right now because if you can make some of the engine components from it and thus make them run hotter the jets become more fuel efficient.

[Vendetagainst]

well it's not actually refined coltan, it's its own element that is simply found naturally in the mineral coltan. It's mostly extracted from the Wodgina Mine which is in Australia.

*Edit: Oh hey look, you're in my sigquote!*