Wow, the more research I do, the more I find that EVERYTHING is related. Follow along with me, it is a wild ride. God is revealing EVERYTHING that has been hidden. Line upon line, a little here, a little there.
Another thing that is coming more and more clear is that ROCKS, more specifically QUARTZ also play a big role in this saga. I had no idea when I started my article about Rock CAIRNS where it would lead. Now, the rabbit hole is getting deeper.
And of course everyone can plainly see that computer/smartphones/the internet is the endgame. That is where we are all headed, to becoming wired to the mainframe and part of the machine. At least if they have their way. And that all started with SAND.
Hope you enjoy the article. I know it is long and I apologize for that….but there is so much to know.
The processor that makes your laptop or cell phone work was fabricated using quartz from this obscure Appalachian backwater.
In the digital age, the jobs we work at, the entertainment we divert ourselves with, and the ways we communicate with one another are increasingly defined by the internet and the computers, tablets, and cell phones that connect us to it. None of this would be possible were it not for sand. DISCOVERY FOOTAGESOURCE/GETTY IMAGES
FRESH FROM CHURCH on a cool, overcast Sunday morning in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, Alex Glover slides onto the plastic bench of a McDonald’s booth. He rummages through his knapsack, then pulls out a plastic sandwich bag full of white powder. “I hope we don’t get arrested,” he says. “Someone might get the wrong idea.”
Glover is a recently retired geologist who has spent decades hunting for valuable minerals in the hillsides and hollows of the Appalachian Mountains that surround this tiny town. He is a small, rounded man with little oval glasses, a neat white mustache, and matching hair clamped under a Jeep baseball cap. He speaks with a medium‑strength drawl that emphasizes the first syllable and stretches some vowels, such that we’re drinking CAWWfee as he explains why this remote area is so tremendously important to the rest of the world.
Spruce Pine is not a wealthy place. Its downtown consists of a somnambulant train station across the street from a couple of blocks of two‑story brick buildings, including a long‑closed movie theater and several empty storefronts.
The wooded mountains surrounding it, though, are rich in all kinds of desirable rocks, some valued for their industrial uses, some for their pure prettiness. But it’s the mineral in Glover’s bag—snowy white grains, soft as powdered sugar—that is by far the most important these days. It’s quartz, but not just any quartz. Spruce Pine, it turns out, is the source of the purest natural quartz—a species of pristine sand—ever found on Earth. This ultra‑elite deposit of silicon dioxide particles plays a key role in manufacturing the silicon used to make computer chips. In fact, there’s an excellent chance the chip that makes your laptop or cell phone work was made using sand from this obscure Appalachian backwater. “It’s a billion‑dollar industry here,” Glover says with a hooting laugh. “Can’t tell by driving through here. You’d never know it.”
Rocks like these high-grade silica samples mined near Charlotte, North Carolina, are the basis for modern computer chips. CHARLES O’REAR/GETTY IMAGES
In the 21st century, sand has become more important than ever, and in more ways than ever. This is the digital age, in which the jobs we work at, the entertainment we divert ourselves with, and the ways we communicate with one another are increasingly defined by the internet and the computers, tablets, and cell phones that connect us to it. None of this would be possible were it not for sand.
Most of the world’s sand grains are composed of quartz, which is a form of silicon dioxide,also known as silica. High‑purity silicon dioxide particles are the essential raw materials from which we make computer chips, fiber‑optic cables, and other high‑tech hardware—the physical components on which the virtual world runs.The quantity of quartz used for these products is minuscule compared to the mountains of it used for concrete or land reclamation. But its impact is immeasurable.
Spruce Pine’s mineralogical wealth is a result of the area’s unique geologic history. About 380 million years ago the area was located south of the equator. Plate tectonics pushed the African continent toward eastern America, forcing the heavier oceanic crust—the geologic layer beneath the ocean’s water—underneath the lighter North American continent. The friction of that colossal grind generated heat topping 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, melting the rock that lay between 9 and 15 miles below the surface. The pressure on that molten rock forced huge amounts of it into cracks and fissures of the surrounding host rock, where it formed deposits of what are known as pegmatites.
It took some 100 million years for the deeply buried molten rock to cool down and crystallize. Thanks to the depth at which it was buried and to the lack of water where all this was happening, the pegmatites formed almost without impurities. Generally speaking, the pegmatites are about 65 percent feldspar, 25 percent quartz, 8 percent mica, and the rest traces of other minerals. Meanwhile, over the course of some 300 million years, the plate under the Appalachian Mountains shifted upward. Weather eroded the exposed rock, until the hard formations of pegmatites were left near the surface.
Unimin’s North Carolina quartz operations supply most of the world’s high‑ and ultra‑high‑purity quartz.JERRY WHALEY/ALAMY
Native Americans mined the shiny, glittering mica and used it for grave decorations and as currency. American settlers began trickling into the mountains in the 1800s, scratching out a living as farmers. A few prospectors tried their hands at the mica business, but were stymied by the steep mountain geography. “There were no rivers, no roads, no trains. They had to haul the stuff out on horseback,” says David Biddix, a scruffy‑haired amateur historian who has written three books about Mitchell County, where Spruce Pine sits.
The region’s prospects started to improve in 1903 when the South and Western Railroad company, in the course of building a line from Kentucky to South Carolina, carved a track up into the mountains, a serpentine marvel that loops back and forth for 20 miles to ascend just 1,000 feet. Once this artery to the outside world was finally opened, mining started to pick up. Locals and wildcatters dug hundreds of shafts and open pits in the mountains of what became known as the Spruce Pine Mining District, a swath of land 25 miles by 10 miles that sprawls over three counties.
Mica used to be prized for wood‑ and coal‑burning stove windows and for electrical insulation in vacuum tube electronics. It’s now used mostly as a specialty additive in cosmetics and things like caulks, sealants, and drywall joint compound.During World War II, demand for mica and feldspar, which are found in tremendous abundance in the area’s pegmatites, boomed. Prosperity came to Spruce Pine. The town quadrupled in size in the 1940s. At its peak, Spruce Pine boasted three movie theaters, two pool halls, a bowling alley, and plenty of restaurants. Three passenger trains came through every day.
Toward the end of the decade, the Tennessee Valley Authority sent a team of scientists to Spruce Pine tasked with further developing the area’s mineral resources. They focused on the money‑makers, micaand feldspar. The problem was separating those minerals from the other ones. A typical chunk of Spruce Pine pegmatite looks like a piece of strange but enticing hard candy: mostly milky white or pink feldspar, inset with shiny mica, studded with clear or smoky quartz, and flecked here and there with bits of deep red garnet and other‑colored minerals.
For years, locals would simply dig up the pegmatites and crush them with hand tools or crude machines, separating out the feldspar and mica by hand. The quartz that was left over was considered junk, at best fit to be used as construction sand, more likely thrown out with the other tailings.
Working with researchers at North Carolina State University’s Minerals Research Laboratory in nearby Asheville, the TVA scientists developed a much faster and more efficient method to separate out minerals, called froth flotation. “It revolutionized the industry,” Glover says. “It made it evolve from a mom‑and‑pop individual industry to a mega‑multinational corporation industry.”
Froth flotation involves running the rock through mechanical crushers until it’s broken down into a heap of mixed‑mineral granules. You dump that mix in a tank, add water to turn it into a milky slurry, and stir well. Next, add reagents—chemicals that bind to the mica grains and make them hydrophobic, meaning they don’t want to touch water. Now pipe a column of air bubbles through the slurry. Terrified of the water surrounding them, the mica grains will frantically grab hold of the air bubbles and be carried up to the top of the tank, forming a froth on the water’s surface. A paddle wheel skims off the froth and shunts it into another tank, where the water is drained out. Voilà: mica.
The remaining feldspar, quartz, and iron are drained from the bottom of the tank and funneled through a series of troughs into the next tank, where a similar process is performed to float out the iron. Repeat, more or less, to remove the feldspar.
IT WAS THE feldspar, which is used in glassmaking, that first attracted engineers from the Corning Glass Company to the area. At the time, the leftover quartz grains were still seen as just unwanted by‑products. But the Corning engineers, always on the lookout for quality material to put to work in the glass factories, noticed the purity of the quartz and started buying it as well, hauling it north by rail to Corning’s facility in Ithaca, New York, where it was turned into everything from windows to bottles.
One of Spruce Pine quartz’s greatest achievements in the glass world came in the 1930s, when Corning won a contract to manufacture the mirror for what was to be the world’s biggest telescope, ordered by the Palomar Observatory in Southern California. Making the 200‑inch, 20‑ton mirror involved melting mountains of quartz in a giant furnace heated to 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, writes David O. Woodbury in The Glass Giant of Palomar.
This may be the reason we don’t have glass bottles anymore. The “scientists” have found more lucrative uses for the base materials.
Once the furnace was hot enough, “three crews of men, working day and night around the clock, began ramming in the sand and chemicals through a door at one end. So slowly did the ingredients melt that only four tons a day could be added. Little by little the fiery pool spread over the bottom of the furnace and rose gradually to an incandescent lake 50 feet long and 15 wide.” The telescope was installed in the observatory in 1947. Its unprecedented power led to important discoveries about the composition of stars and the size of the universe itself. It is still in use today.
In the 1930s, Corning won a contract to manufacture the mirror for what was to be the world’s biggest telescope, ordered by the Palomar Observatory in Southern California. Making the 200‑inch, 20‑ton mirror involved melting mountains of quartz in a giant furnace heated to 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit.THE MONTIFRAULO COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES
Significant as that telescope was, Spruce Pine quartz was soon to take on a far more important role as the digital age began to dawn.
HERE IS THE DEVELOPMENT THAT CHANGED OUR WORLD FOREVER
In the mid‑1950s, thousands of miles from North Carolina, a group of engineers in California began working on an invention that would become the foundation of the computer industry. William Shockley, a pathbreaking engineer at Bell Labs who had helped invent the transistor, had left to set up his own company in Mountain View, California, a sleepy town about an hour south of San Francisco, near where he had grown up. Stanford University was nearby, and General Electric and IBM had facilities in the area, as well as a new company called Hewlett‑Packard. But the area known at the time as the Santa Clara Valley was still mostly filled with apricot, pear, and plum orchards. It would soon become much better known by a new nickname: Silicon Valley.
At the time, the transistor market was heating up fast. Texas Instruments, Motorola, and other companies were all competing to come up with smaller, more efficient transistors to use in, among other products, computers.The first American computer, dubbed ENIAC, was developed by the army during World War II; it was 100 feet long and 10 feet high, and it ran on 18,000 vacuum tubes.
Transistors, which are tiny electronic switches that control the flow of electricity, offered a way to replace those tubes and make these new machines even more powerful while shrinking their tumid footprint. Semiconductors—a small class of elements, including germanium and silicon, which conduct electricity at certain temperatures while blocking it at others—looked like promising materials for making those transistors.
At Shockley’s startup, a flock of young PhDs began each morning by firing up kilns to thousands of degrees and melting down germanium and silicon. Tom Wolfe once described the scene in Esquire magazine: “They wore white lab coats, goggles, and work gloves. When they opened the kiln doors weird streaks of orange and white light went across their faces. . . they lowered a small mechanical column into the goo so that crystals formed on the bottom of the column, and they pulled the crystal out and tried to get a grip on it with tweezers, and put it under microscopes and cut it with diamond cutters, among other things, into minute slices, wafers, chips; there were no names in electronics for these tiny forms.”
Shockley became convinced that silicon was the more promising material and shifted his focus accordingly. “Since he already had the first and most famous semiconductor research and manufacturing company, everyone who had been working with germanium stopped and switched to silicon,” writes Joel Shurkin in his biography of Shockley, Broken Genius. “Indeed, without his decision, we would speak of Germanium Valley.”
Shockley was a genius, but by all accounts he was also a lousy boss. Within a couple of years, several of his most talented engineers had jumped ship to start their own company, which they dubbed Fairchild Semiconductor. One of them was Robert Noyce, a laid‑back but brilliant engineer, only in his mid‑20s but already famous for his expertise with transistors.
William Shockley worked with the element germanium, as well, before becoming convinced that silicon was the more promising material. ALFRED EISENSTAEDT/PIX INC./THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory was the first and most famous semiconductor research and manufacturing company. Shockley was responsible for the switch to silicon for computer chips.
In 1959, when Robert Noyceand his colleagues at Fairchild Semiconductor figured out a way to cram several transistors onto a single fingernail‑sized sliver of high‑purity silicon. He went on to found Intel.TED STRESHINSKY/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES
The breakthrough came in 1959, when Noyce and his colleagues figured out a way to cram several transistors onto a single fingernail‑sized sliver of high‑purity silicon. At almost the same time, Texas Instruments developed a similar gadget made from germanium. Noyce’s, though, was more efficient, and it soon dominated the market. NASA selected Fairchild’s microchip for use in the space program, and sales soon shot from almost nothing to $130 million a year. In 1968, Noyce left to found his own company. He called it Intel,and it soon dominated the nascent industry of programmable computer chips.
Intel’s first commercial chip, released in 1971, contained 2,250 transistors. Today’s computer chips are often packed with transistors numbering in the billions. Those tiny electronic squares and rectangles are the brains that run our computers, the Internet, and the entire digital world. Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, the computer systems that underpin the work of everything from the Pentagon to your local bank—all of this and much more is based on sand,remade as silicon chips. (built on a foundation of sand.)
Making those chips is a fiendishly complicated process. They require essentially pure silicon. The slightest impurity can throw their tiny systems out of whack.
Finding silicon is easy. It’s one of the most abundant elements on Earth. It shows up practically everywhere bound together with oxygen to form SiO2, aka quartz. The problem is that it never occurs naturally in pure, elemental form. Separating out the silicon takes considerable doing.
Step one is to take high‑purity silica sand, the kind used for glass. (Lump quartz is also sometimes used.)That quartz is then blasted in a powerful electric furnace, creating a chemical reaction that separates out much of the oxygen. That leaves you with what is called silicon metal, which is about 99 percent pure silicon. But that’s not nearly good enough for high‑tech uses. Silicon for solar panels has to be 99.999999 percent pure—six 9s after the decimal.Computer chips are even more demanding. Their silicon needs to be 99.99999999999 percent pure—eleven 9s. “We are talking of one lonely atom of something that is not silicon among billions of silicon companions,” writes geologist Michael Welland in Sand: The Never-Ending Story.
Getting there requires treating the silicon metal with a series of complex chemical processes. The first round of these converts the silicon metal into two compounds. One is silicon tetrachloride, which is the primary ingredient used to make the glass cores of optical fibers. The other is trichlorosilane, which is treated further to become polysilicon, an extremely pure form of silicon that will go on to become the key ingredient in solar cells and computer chips.
Each of these steps might be carried out by more than one company, and the price of the material rises sharply at each step. That first‑step, 99 percent pure silicon metal goes for about $1 a pound; polysilicon can cost 10 times as much.
Semiconductors are a small class of elements, including silicon, which conduct electricity at certain temperatures while blocking it at others.GETTY IMAGES
The next step is to melt down the polysilicon. But you can’t just throw this exquisitely refined material in a cook pot. If the molten silicon comes into contact with even the tiniest amount of the wrong substance, it causes a ruinous chemical reaction. You need crucibles made from the one substance that has both the strength to withstand the heat required to melt polysilicon, and a molecular composition that won’t infect it. That substance is pure quartz.
THIS IS WHERESpruce Pine quartz comes in. It’s the world’s primary source of the raw material needed to make the fused‑quartz crucibles in which computer‑chip‑grade polysilicon is melted.A fire in 2008 at one of the main quartz facilities in Spruce Pine for a time all but shut off the supply of high‑purity quartz to the world market, sending shivers through the industry.
Today one company dominates production of Spruce Pine quartz. Unimin, an outfit founded in 1970, has gradually bought up Spruce Pine area mines and bought out competitors, until today the company’s North Carolina quartz operations supply most of the world’s high‑ and ultra‑high‑purity quartz. (Unimin itself is now a division of a Belgian mining conglomerate, Sibelco.)
In recent years, another company, the imaginatively titled Quartz Corp, has managed to grab a small share of the Spruce Pine market. There are a very few other places around the world producing high‑purity quartz, and many other places where companies are looking hard for more. But Unimin controls the bulk of the trade.
The quartz for the crucibles, like the silicon they will produce, needs to be almost absolutely pure, purged as thoroughly as possible of other elements. Spruce Pine quartz is highly pure to begin with, and purer still after being put through several rounds of froth flotation. But some of the grains may still have what Glover calls interstitial crystalline contamination—molecules of other minerals attached to the quartz molecules.
That’s frustratingly common. “I’ve evaluated thousands of quartz samples from all over the world,” says John Schlanz, chief minerals processing engineer at the Minerals Research Laboratory in Asheville, about an hour from Spruce Pine. “Near all of them have contaminate locked in the quartz grains that you can’t get out.”
Some Spruce Pine quartz is flawed in this way. Those grains are used for high‑end beach sand and golf course bunkers—most famously the salt‑white traps of Augusta National Golf Club, site of the iconic Masters Tournament. A golf course in the oil‑drunk United Arab Emirates imported 4,000 tons of this sand in 2008 to make sure its sand traps were world‑class, too.
The very best Spruce Pine quartz, however, has an open crystalline structure, which means that hydrofluoric acid can be injected right into the crystal molecules to dissolve any lingering traces of feldspar or iron, taking the purity up another notch.Technicians take it one step further by reacting the quartz with chlorine or hydrochloric acid at high temperatures, then putting it through one or two more trade‑secret steps of physical and chemical processing.
The result is what Unimin markets as Iota quartz, the industry standard of purity. The basic Iota quartz is 99.998 percent pure SiO2. It is used to make things like halogen lamps and photovoltaic cells, but it’s not good enough to make those crucibles in which polysilicon is melted. For that you need Iota 6, or the tip‑top of the line, Iota 8, which clocks in at 99.9992 percent purity—meaning for every one billion molecules of SiO , there are only 80 molecules of impurities.Iota 8 sells for up to $10,000 a ton. Regular construction sand, at the other end of the sand scale, can be had for a few dollars per ton.
At his house, Glover shows me some Iota under a microscope. Seen through the instrument’s lens (itself made from a much less pure quartz sand), the jagged little shards are as clear as glass and bright as diamonds.
Unimin sells this ultra‑high‑purity quartz sand to companies like General Electric, which melts it, spins it, and fuses it into what looks like a salad bowl made of milky glass: the crucible. “It’s safe to say the vast majority of those crucibles are made from Spruce Pine quartz,” Schlanz says.
The polysilicon is placed in those quartz crucibles, melted down, and set spinning. Then a silicon seed crystal about the size of a pencil is lowered into it,spinning in the opposite direction. The seed crystal is slowly withdrawn, pulling behind it what is now a single giant silicon crystal. These dark, shiny crystals, weighing about 220 pounds, are called ingots.
Polysilicon is placed in quartz crucibles, melted down, and set spinning.KAY CHERNUSH/GETTY IMAGES
Dark, shiny crystals of silicon called ingots are sliced into thin wafers. Ingots of the highest purity are polished to mirror smoothness and sold to a chipmaker like Intel.GETTY IMAGES
The ingots are sliced into thin wafers. Some are sold to solar cell manufacturers. Ingots of the highest purity are polished to mirror smoothness and sold to a chipmaker like Intel.It’s a thriving multi-billion dollar industry in 2012.
The chipmaker imprints patterns of transistors on the wafer using a process called photolithography. Copper is implanted to link those billions of transistors to form integrated circuits. Even a minute particle of dust can ruin the chip’s intricate circuitry, so all of this happens in what’s called a clean room, where purifiers keep the air thousands of times cleaner than a hospital operating room. Technicians dress in an all‑covering white uniform affectionately known as a bunny suit. To ensure the wafers don’t get contaminated during manufacture, many of the tools used to move and manipulate them are, like the crucibles, made from high‑purity quartz.
The wafers are then cut into tiny, unbelievably thin quadrangular chips—computer chips, the brains inside your mobile phone or laptop. The whole process requires hundreds of precise, carefully controlled steps. The chip that results is easily one of the most complicated man‑made objects on Earth, yet made with the most common stuff on Earth: humble sand.
The total amount of high‑purity quartz produced worldwide each year is estimated at 30,000 tons—less than the amount of construction sand produced in the United States every hour. (And even construction sand is in high demand; there’s a thriving black market in the stuff.) Only Unimin knows exactly how much Spruce Pine quartz is produced, because it doesn’t publish any production figures.It is an organization famously big on secrecy. “Spruce Pine used to be mom‑and‑ pop operations,” Schlanz says. “When I first worked up there, you could just walk into any of the operations. You could just go across the street and borrow a piece of equipment.”
NOWADAYS UNIMIN WON’T even allow staff of the Minerals Research Laboratory inside the mines or processing facilities.Contractors brought in to do repair work have to sign confidentiality agreements. Whenever possible, vice‑president Richard Zielke recently declared in court papers, the company splits up the work among different contractors so that no individual can learn too much.
Unimin buys equipment and parts from multiple vendors for the same reason. Glover has heard of contractors being blindfolded inside the processing plants until they arrive at the specific area where their jobs are and of an employee who was fired on the spot for bringing someone in without authorization. He says the company doesn’t even allow its employees to socialize with those of their competitors.
It was hard to check out Glover’s stories, because Unimin wouldn’t talk to me. Unlike most big corporations, its website lists no contact for a press spokesperson or public relations representative.Several emails to their general inquiries address went unanswered. When I called the company’s headquarters in Connecticut, the woman who answered the phone seemed mystified by the concept of a journalist wanting to ask questions.
She put me on hold for a few minutes, then came back to tell me the company has no PR department, but that if I faxed (faxed!) her my questions, someone might get back to me. Eventually I got in touch with a Unimin executive who asked me to send her my questions by email. I did so. The response: “Unfortunately, we are not in a position to provide answers at this point in time.”
So I tried the direct approach. Like all the quartz mining and processing facilities in the area, Unimin’s Schoolhouse Quartz Plant, set in a valley amid low, thickly treed hills, is surrounded by a barbed‑wire‑topped fence. Security isn’t exactly at the level of Fort Knox, but the message is clear.
One Saturday morning I go to take a look at the plant with David Biddix. We park across the street from the gate. A sign warns that the area is under video surveillance, and that neither guns nor tobacco are allowed inside.As soon as I hop out to snap a few photos, a matronly woman in a security guard uniform popped out of the gatehouse. “Watcha doin’?” she asks conversationally. I give her my friendliest smile and tell her I am a journalist writing a book about sand, including about the importance of the quartz sand in this very facility. She takes that all in skeptically, and asks me to call Unimin’s local office the following Monday to get permission.
“Sure, I’ll do that,” I say. “I just want to take a look, as long as I’m here.” “Well, please don’t take pictures,” she says. There isn’t much to see—some piles of white sand, a bunch of metal tanks, a redbrick building near the gate—so I agree. She lumbers back inside. I put away my camera and pull out my notebook. That brings her right back out.
“You don’t look like a terrorist”—she laughs apologetically— “but these days you never know. I’m asking you to leave before I get grumpy.”
“I understand,” I say. “I just want to take a few notes. And anyway, this is a public road. I have the right to be here.”
That really displeased her. “I’m doing my job,” she snaps. “I’m doing mine,” I reply.
“All right, I’m taking notes, too,” she declares. “And if anything happens . . .” Leaving the consequences unspecified, she strides over to my rental car and officiously writes down its license plate number, then asks for the name of “my companion” in the passenger seat. I don’t want to get Biddix in any trouble, so I politely decline, hop in, and drive off.
Unimin guards its trade secrets fiercely. Whenever possible, vice‑president Richard Zielke recently declared in court papers, the company splits up the work among different contractors so that no individual can learn too much.VINCE BEISERI
F YOU REALLY want a sense of how zealously Unimin guards its trade secrets, ask Tom Gallo. He used to work for the company, and then for years had his life ruined by it.
Gallo is a small, lean man in his 50s, originally from New Jersey. He relocated to North Carolina when he was hired by Unimin in 1997. His first day on the job, he was handed a confidentiality agreement; he was surprised at how restrictive it was and didn’t think it was fair. But there he was, way out in Spruce Pine, with all his possessions in a moving truck, his life in New Jersey already left behind. So he signed it.
Gallo worked for Unimin in Spruce Pine for 12 years. When he left, he signed a noncompete agreement that forbade him from working for any of the company’s competitors in the high‑purity quartz business for five years. He and his wife moved to Asheville and started up an artisanal pizza business, which they dubbed Gallolea—his last name plus that of a friend who had encouraged him.
It was a rough go. The pizza business was never a big money‑maker, and it was soon hit with a lawsuit over its name from the E.J. Gallo Winery. Gallo spent thousands of dollars fighting the suit—it’s his name, after all—but eventually decided the prudent course would be to give up and change the company’s name. The five‑year noncompete term had run out by then, so when a small startup quartz company, I‑Minerals, called to offer Gallo a consulting gig, he gladly accepted. I‑Minerals put out a press release bragging about the hire and touting Gallo’s expertise.
That turned to be a big mistake. Unimin promptly filed a lawsuit against Gallo and I‑Minerals, accusing them of trying to steal Unimin’s secrets. “There was no call, no cease‑and‑desist order, no investigation,” Gallo says. “They filed a 150‑page brief against me on the basis of a press release.”
Over the next several years, Gallo spent tens of thousands of dollars fighting the suit. “That’s how billion‑dollar corporations terrify people,” he says. “I had to take money out of my 401(k) to defend myself against this totally baseless lawsuit. We were afraid we would lose our house. It was terrifying. You can’t imagine how many sleepless nights my wife and I have had.” His pizza business collapsed. “When Unimin filed suit, we had just gotten over the Gallo thing. It was the sledgehammer that broke the camel’s back. We’d worked on it for five years. It was more than we could handle emotionally, psychologically, and financially.”
Unimin eventually lost the case, appealed it to federal court, and finally dropped it. I‑Minerals and Gallo separately countersued Unimin, calling its suit an abuse of the judicial process aimed at harassing a potential competitor. Unimin eventually agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to have the suits withdrawn. Under the terms of the settlement, Gallo can’t disclose the details, but says bitterly, “When you get sued by a big corporation, you lose no matter what.”
For all the wealth that comes out of the ground in the Spruce Pine area, not much of it stays there. Today the mines are all owned by foreign corporations. They’re highly automated, so they don’t need many workers.“Now there’s maybe 25 or 30 people on a shift, instead of 300,” Biddix says. The area’s other jobs are vanishing. “We had seven furniture factories here when I was a kid,” he says. “We had knitting mills making blue jeans and nylons. They’re all gone.”
Median household income in Mitchell County, where Spruce Pine sits, is just over $37,000, far below the national average of $51,579. Twenty percent of the county’s 15,000 people, almost all of whom are white, live below the poverty line.Fewer than one in seven adults has a college degree.
People find ways to get by. Glover has a side business growing Christmas trees on his property. Biddix makes his living running the website of a nearby community college.
One of the few new sources of jobs are several huge data processing centers that have opened up in the area. Attracted by the cheap land, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and other tech companies have all opened up server farms within an hour’s drive of Spruce Pine.
In a sense, Spruce Pine’s quartz has come full circle. “When you talk to Siri, you’re talking to a building here at the Apple center,”Biddix says.
I pull out my iPhone and ask Siri if she knows where her silicon brains came from.
“Who, me?” she replies the first time. I try again.
Sibelco has announced the formation of Unimin Energy Solutions, a global commercial division, designed to serve the worldwide energy services industry
The newly formed global division will manage customer relationships, product development and optimisation, technical support, analytical services and technology innovations to deliver hydraulic fracturing proppants and engineered mineral additives for drilling, completion and production
The new organisation will unify Sibelco’s Energy mineral portfolio and global footprint under a single, energy solutions umbrella.
Unimin Energy Solutions integrates the North American expertise of Unimin with the global capabilities and expertise of Sibelco to create the first truly global oilfield minerals company.
Unimin operates with the world’s largest installed Northern White sand production capacity and is the leading supplier of hydraulic fracturing sands in North and South America. (But it is wholey owned by Belgium) Unimin’s parent company, Sibelco, is a diversified industrial minerals producer and the world’s largest producer of industrial sand with mineral resources and processing capabilities located throughout the world.
“Unimin Energy Solutions is a strategic investment that reflects our on-going commitment to our customers in the oil and gas industry as they grow around the globe” (so they are totally committed to the Oil Barons of the World and protecting their financial interests), said Jean-Luc Deleersnyder, chief executive officer of Sibelco.
“The supply dynamic is evolving as global operators increasingly focus on proppant performance to sustain conductivity and recovery rates, and we are uniquely positioned to respond to this new performance and service requirements, wherever they may be in the world”.
The newly formed global division will manage customer relationships, product development and optimisation, technical support, analytical services and technology innovations to deliver hydraulic fracturing proppants and engineered mineral additives for drilling, completion and production.
“We will continue to leverage Unimin’s superior quality and service standards for proppants and oilfield minerals worldwide”, said Dave Frattaroli, chief commercial officer of the newly created division. “Unimin Energy Solutions combines more than 40 years of seamless hydraulic fracturing sand production, logistics and customer service across North America and more than 140 years of the global resources and local capabilities of Sibelco to deliver the right products, on time and in-spec.”
The privately held Sibelco Group operates with a long-term business perspective that emphasizes customer service, operational excellence and sustainable development.
spacer
I believe that the elite/bloodline of the fallen are working to destroy and/or corrupt everything that God created. GOD set the Earth on its foundation. I believe that is the rock that separates the water from the dry land. I believe that these elite are working to DESTROY THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE EARTH. All the tunneling and fracking they have been doing is destabilizing the earth.
The following scripture speaks of the foundation God laid. In truth the entire chapter of Job is written in question form to show that HE is God because He has done all the things mentioned. I believe that the elite are trying to become gods by replicating/copying or counterfeiting or destroying all the items mentioned.
spacer
38 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, 2 Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? 3 Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. 4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. 5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? 6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? 8 Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? 9 When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it, 10 And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, 11 And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed? 12 Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place; 13 That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it? 14 It is turned as clay to the seal; and they stand as a garment. 15 And from the wicked their light is withholden, and the high arm shall be broken. 16 Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth? 17 Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death? 18 Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all. 19 Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof, 20 That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof? 21 Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born? or because the number of thy days is great? 22 Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, 23 Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war? 24 By what way is the light parted, which scattereth the east wind upon the earth? 25 Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder; 26 To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man; 27 To satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? 28 Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew? 29 Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? 30 The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen. 31 Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? 32 Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? 33 Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? 34 Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee? 35 Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee, Here we are? 36 Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? or who hath given understanding to the heart? 37 Who can number the clouds in wisdom? or who can stay the bottles of heaven, 38 When the dust groweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together? 39 Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion? or fill the appetite of the young lions, 40 When they couch in their dens, and abide in the covert to lie in wait? 41 Who provideth for the raven his food? when his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat. Job 38:4
spacer
If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? Psalm 11:3
As I read about the beginnings of the computer industry and how all of their developments are dependent on SAND, I could not help but think of the following Scripture and how it applies to their Kingdom. They have built their Kingdom on a foundation of SAND.
spacer
The Wise and Foolish Builders
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7:24-27
Depiction of glass sand, dune sand, quartz sand, volcanic sand, coral sand, garnet sand, and olivine sand. Samples are from Mongolia, Estonia, Hawaii, and mainland U.S. (1×1 cm each)[1]
Sand grains of yellow building sand. Microscope Lumam P-8. EPI lighting. The photo of each grain of sand is the result of multifocal stacking.
Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles. It is defined by size, being finer than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class of soil or soil type; i.e., a soil containing more than 85 percent sand-sized particles by mass.[2]
The composition of sand varies, depending on the local rock sources and conditions, but the most common constituent of sand in inland continental settings and non-tropicalcoastal settings issilica (silicon dioxide, or SiO2), usually in the form of quartz. The second most common type of sand is calcium carbonate, for example, aragonite,which has mostly been created, over the past half billion years, by various forms of life, like coral and shellfish. For example, it is the primary form of sand apparent in areas where reefs have dominated the ecosystem for millions of years like theCaribbean.
Sand is a non-renewable resource over human timescales, and sand suitable for making concrete is in high demand.[3] Desert sand, although plentiful, is not suitable for concrete. 50 billion tons of beach sand and fossil sand is used each year for construction.[4]
Sand grains of yellow building sand. Microscope Lumam P-8. EPI lighting. The photo of each grain of sand is the result of multifocal stacking.
Abrasion: Before sandpaper, wet sand was used as an abrasive element between rotating devices with elastic surface and hard materials such as very hard stone (making of stone vases), or metal (removal of old stain before re-staining copper cooking pots).
Agriculture: Sandy soils are ideal for crops such as watermelons, peaches, and peanuts, and their excellent drainage characteristics make them suitable for intensive dairy farming.
Aquaria: Sand makes a low-cost aquarium base material which some believe is better than gravel for home use. It is also a necessity for saltwater reef tanks, which emulate environments composed largely of aragonite sand broken down from coral and shellfish.
Concrete: Sand is often a principal component of this critical construction material.
Glass: Sand rich in silica is the principal component in common glasses.
Hydraulic fracturing: A drilling technique for natural gas, which uses rounded silica sand as a “proppant”, a material to hold open cracks that are caused by the hydraulic fracturing process.
Landscaping: Sand makes small hills and slopes (golf courses would be an example).
Mortar: Sand is mixed with masonry cement or Portland cement and lime to be used in masonry construction.
Paint: Mixing sand with paint produces a textured finish for walls and ceilings or non-slip floor surfaces.
Recreation: Playing with sand is a favorite beach activity. One of the most beloved uses of sand is to make sometimes intricate, sometimes simple structures known as sand castles, proverbially impermanent. Special play areas for children, enclosing a significant area of sand and known as sandboxes, are common on many public playgrounds, and even at some single-family homes. Sand dunes are also popular among climbers, motorcyclists and beach buggy drivers.
Roads: Sand improves traction (and thus traffic safety) in icy or snowy conditions.
Sand animation: Performance artists draw images in sand. Makers of animated films use the same term to describe their use of sand on frontlit or backlit glass.
Sand casting: Casters moisten or oil molding sand, also known as foundry sand and then shape it into molds into which they pour molten material. This type of sand must be able to withstand high temperatures and pressure, allow gases to escape, have a uniform, small grain size, and be non-reactive with metals.
Sandbags: These protect against floods and gunfire. The inexpensive bags are easy to transport when empty, and unskilled volunteers can quickly fill them with local sand in emergencies.
Sandblasting: Graded sand serves as an abrasive in cleaning, preparing, and polishing.
Thermal weapon: While not in widespread use anymore, sand used to be heated and poured on invading troops in the classical and medieval time periods.
Water filtration: Media filters use sand for filtering water
Wuḍūʾ: an Islamic ritual wiping of parts of the body
Zoanthid “skeletons”: Animals in this order of marine benthiccnidarians related to corals and sea anemones, incorporate sand into their mesoglea for structural strength, which they need because they lack a true skeleton.
Resources and environmental concerns
Only some sands are suitable for the construction industry, for example for making concrete. Because of the growth of population and of cities and the consequent construction activity there is a huge demand for these special kinds of sand,and natural sources are running low. In 2012 French director Denis Delestracmade a documentary called “Sand Wars“about the impact of the lack of construction sand. It shows the ecological and economic effects of both legal and illegal trade in construction sand.[17][18][19]
To retrieve the sand, the method of hydraulic dredging is used. This works by pumping the top few meters of sand out of the water and filling it into a boat, which is then transported back to land for processing. Unfortunately, all marine life mixed in with the extracted sand is killed and the ecosystem can continue to suffer for years after the mining is complete.Not only does this affect marine life, but also the local fishing industries because of the loss of life, and communities living close to the water’s edge.When sand is taken out of the water it increases the risk of landslides, which can lead to loss of agricultural land and/or damage to dwellings.[20]
Sand’s many uses require a significant dredging industry,raising environmental concerns over fish depletion, landslides, and flooding.[21]Countries such as China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Cambodia ban sand exports, citing these issues as a major factor.[22]It is estimated that the annual consumption of sand and gravel is 40 billion tons and sand is a US$70 billion global industry.[23]
The global demand for sand in 2017 was 9.55 billion tons as part of a $99.5 billion industry.[24]
spacer
spacer
Granite (/ˈɡrænɪt/) is a common type of felsicintrusiveigneous rock that is granular and phaneritic in texture. Granites can be predominantly white, pink, or gray in color, depending on their mineralogy. The word “granite” comes from the Latingranum, a grain, in reference to the coarse-grained structure of such a completely crystalline rock. Strictly speaking, granite is an igneous rock with between 20% and 60% quartz by volume, and at least 35% of the total feldspar consisting of alkali feldspar, although commonly the term “granite” is used to refer to a wider range of coarse-grained igneous rocks containing quartz and feldspar. Wikipedia
Quartz exists in two forms, the normal α-quartz and the high-temperature β-quartz, both of which are chiral. The transformation from α-quartz to β-quartz takes place abruptly at 573 °C (846 K; 1,063 °F). Since the transformation is accompanied by a significant change in volume, it can easily induce fracturing of ceramics or rocks passing through this temperature threshold.
There are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are semi-precious gemstones. Since antiquity, varieties of quartz have been the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewelryand hardstone carvings, especially in Eurasia.
SO, quartz is the mineral most often used to make Idols.
Etymology
The word “quartz” is derived from the German word “Quarz”, which had the same form in the first half of the 14th century in Middle High German in East Central German[8] and which came from the Polish dialect term kwardy, which corresponds to the Czech term tvrdý (“hard”).[9]
The Ancient Greeks referred to quartz as κρύσταλλος (krustallos) derived from the Ancient Greekκρύος (kruos) meaning “icy cold”, because some philosophers (including Theophrastus) apparently believed the mineral to be a form of supercooled ice.[10] Today, the term rock crystal is sometimes used as an alternative name for the purest form of quartz.
Crystal habit and structure
Quartz mineral embedded in limestone (top right of the sample), easily identifiable by its hexagonal form. It cannot be scratched by steel (see Mohs scale).
Quartz belongs to the trigonal crystal system. Theideal crystal shapeis a six-sidedprismterminating with six-sided pyramidsat each end. In nature quartz crystals are often twinned (with twin right-handed and left-handed quartz crystals), distorted, or so intergrown with adjacent crystals of quartz or other minerals as to only show part of this shape, or to lack obvious crystal faces altogether and appear massive. Well-formed crystals typically form in a ‘bed’ that has unconstrained growth into a void; usually the crystals are attached at the other end to a matrix and only one termination pyramid is present. However, doubly terminated crystals do occur where they develop freely without attachment, for instance within gypsum. A quartz geode is such a situation where the void is approximately spherical in shape, lined with a bed of crystals pointing inward.
α-quartz crystallizes in the trigonal crystal system,space groupP3121 or P3221 depending on the chirality. β-quartz belongs to the hexagonal system, space group P6222 and P6422, respectively.[11] These space groups are truly chiral (they each belong to the 11 enantiomorphous pairs). Both α-quartz and β-quartz are examples of chiral crystal structures composed of achiral building blocks (SiO4tetrahedra in the present case). The transformation between α- and β-quartz only involves a comparatively minor rotation of the tetrahedra with respect to one another, without change in the way they are linked.
Crystal structure of α-quartz (red balls are oxygen, grey are silicon)
β-quartz
So we see that Quartz displays two very significant symbols of Satanist/Kabbalists/Illuminists/Magicians; the Tetrahedon and the CUBE.
Varieties (according to microstructure)
Although many of the varietal names historically arose from the color of the mineral, current scientific naming schemes refer primarily to the microstructure of the mineral. Color is a secondary identifier for the cryptocrystalline minerals, although it is a primary identifier for the macrocrystalline varieties.[12]
Fibrous, variously translucent, cryptocrystalline quartz occurring in many varieties. The term is often used for white, cloudy, or lightly colored material intergrown with moganite. Otherwise more specific names are used.
Pure quartz, traditionally called rock crystal or clear quartz, is colorless and transparent or translucent, and has often been used for hardstone carvings, such as the Lothair Crystal. Common colored varieties include citrine, rose quartz, amethyst, smoky quartz, milky quartz, and others.[13] These color differentiations arise from the presence of impurities which change the molecular orbitals, causing some electronic transitions to take place in the visible spectrum causing colors. Polymorphs of quartz include: α-quartz (low), β-quartz, tridymite, moganite, cristobalite, coesite, and stishovite.
The most important distinction between types of quartz is that of macrocrystalline (individual crystals visible to the unaided eye) and the microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline varieties (aggregates of crystals visible only under high magnification). The cryptocrystalline varieties are either translucent or mostly opaque, while the transparent varieties tend to be macrocrystalline. Chalcedony is a cryptocrystalline form of silica consisting of fine intergrowths of both quartz, and its monoclinic polymorph moganite.[14] Other opaque gemstone varieties of quartz, or mixed rocks including quartz, often including contrasting bands or patterns of color, are agate, carnelian or sard, onyx, heliotrope, and jasper.
Amethyst
Amethyst is a form of quartz that ranges from a bright vivid violet to dark or dull lavender shade. The world’s largest deposits of amethysts can be found in Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Russia, France, Namibia and Morocco. Sometimes amethyst and citrine are found growing in the same crystal. It is then referred to as ametrine. An amethyst is formed when there is iron in the area where it was formed.
Inclusions of the mineral dumortierite within quartz pieces often result in silky-appearing splotches with a blue hue, shades giving off purple and/or grey colors additionally being found. “Dumortierite quartz” (sometimes called “blue quartz”) will sometimes feature contrasting light and dark color zones across the material.[16][17] Interest in the certain quality forms of blue quartz as a collectible gemstone particularly arises in India and in the United States.[16]
Carnelian (also spelled cornelian[2]) is a brownish-red mineral commonly used as a semi-precious gemstone. Similar to carnelian is sard, which is generally harder and darker (the difference is not rigidly defined, and the two names are often used interchangeably). Both carnelian and sard are varieties of the silica mineral chalcedony colored by impurities of iron oxide. The color can vary greatly, ranging from pale orange to an intense almost-black coloration. It is most commonly found in Indonesia, Brazil, India, Russia (Siberia), and Germany.
The red variety of chalcedony has been known to be used as beads since the Early Neolithic in Bulgaria. The first faceted (with constant 16+16=32 facets on each side of the bead) carnelian beads are described from the Varna Chalcolithic necropolis (middle of the 5th millennium BC).[3] The bow drill was used to drill holes into carnelian in Mehrgarh in the 4th-5th millennium BC.[4] Carnelian was recovered from Bronze AgeMinoan layers at Knossos on Crete in a form that demonstrated its use in decorative arts;[5] this use dates to approximately 1800 BC. Carnelian was used widely during Roman times to make engraved gems for signet or seal rings for imprinting a seal with wax on correspondence or other important documents. Hot wax does not stick to carnelian.[6] Sard was used for Assyriancylinder seals, Egyptian and Phoenicianscarabs, and early Greek and Etruscan gems.[7] The Hebrewodem (also translated sardius), the first stone in the High Priest’s breastplate, was a red stone, probably sard but perhaps red jasper.[7] In Revelation 4:3, the One seated on the heavenly throne seen in the vision of John the apostle is said to “look like jasper and ‘σαρδίῳ’ (sardius transliterated)”. And likewise it is in Revelation 21:20 as one of the precious stones in the foundations of the wall of the heavenly city.[8]
There is a Neo-Assyrian seal made of carnelian in the Western Asiatic Seals collection of the British Museum that shows Ishtar–Gula as a star goddess. She is holding a ring of royal authority and is seated on a throne. She is shown with the spade of Marduk (his symbol), Sibbiti (שבע or sheva in Hebrew language) gods, stylus of Nabu and a worshiper. An 8th century BCE carnelian seal from the collection of the Ashmolean Museum shows Ishtar-Gula with her dog facing the spade of Marduk and his red dragon.[9]
Carnelian Etymology
Although now the more common term, “carnelian” is a 16th-century corruption of the 14th-century word “cornelian” (and its associated orthographies corneline and cornalyn).[10] Cornelian, cognate with similar words in several Romance languages, comes from the Mediaeval Latincorneolus, itself derived from the Latin word cornum, the cornel cherry,[11] whose translucent red fruits resemble the stone. The Oxford English Dictionary calls “carnelian” a perversion of “cornelian”, by subsequent analogy with the Latin word caro, carnis, flesh. According to Pliny the Elder, sard derived its name from the city of Sardis in Lydia from which it came, and according to others, may ultimately be related to the Persian word سرد sered, meaning yellowish red.[7]Sarx in Greek means “flesh”, and other stones have similar naming, such as the onyx stone in sardonx, which came from Greek for “claw” or “fingernail” because onyx with flesh-colored and white bands can resemble a fingernail.[12] So this type of use analogy may have been more widespread
Citrine
Citrine is a variety of quartz whose color ranges from a pale yellow to brown due to ferric impurities. Natural citrines are rare; most commercial citrines are heat-treated amethysts or smoky quartzes. However, a heat-treated amethyst will have small lines in the crystal, as opposed to a natural citrine’s cloudy or smokey appearance. It is nearly impossible to differentiate between cut citrine and yellow topaz visually, but they differ in hardness. Brazil is the leading producer of citrine, with much of its production coming from the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The name is derived from the Latin word citrina which means “yellow” and is also the origin of the word “citron“. Sometimes citrine and amethyst can be found together in the same crystal, which is then referred to as ametrine.[18] Citrine has been referred to as the “merchant’s stone” or “money stone”, due to a superstition that it would bring prosperity.[19]
Citrine was first appreciated as a golden-yellow gemstone in Greece between 300 and 150 BC, during the Hellenistic Age. The yellow quartz was used prior to that to decorate jewelry and tools but it was not highly sought after.[20]
Milky quartz
Milk quartz or milky quartz is the most common variety of crystalline quartz. The white color is caused by minute fluid inclusions of gas, liquid, or both, trapped during crystal formation,[21] making it of little value for optical and quality gemstone applications.[22]
Rose quartz
Rose quartz is a type of quartz which exhibits a pale pink to rose red hue. The color is usually considered as due to trace amounts of titanium, iron, or manganese, in the material. Some rose quartz contains microscopic rutile needles which produces an asterism in transmitted light. Recent X-ray diffraction studies suggest that the color is due to thin microscopic fibers of possibly dumortierite within the quartz.[23]
Additionally, there is a rare type of pink quartz (also frequently called crystalline rose quartz) with color that is thought to be caused by trace amounts of phosphate or aluminium. The color in crystals is apparently photosensitive and subject to fading. The first crystals were found in a pegmatite found near Rumford, Maine, US and in Minas Gerais, Brazil.[24]
Smoky quartz
Smoky quartz is a gray, translucent version of quartz. It ranges in clarity from almost complete transparency to a brownish-gray crystal that is almost opaque. Some can also be black. The translucency results from natural irradiation creating free silicon within the crystal.
Prasiolite, also known as vermarine, is a variety of quartz that is green in color. Since 1950, almost all natural prasiolite has come from a small Brazilian mine, but it is also seen in Lower Silesia in Poland. Naturally occurring prasiolite is also found in the Thunder Bay area of Canada. It is a rare mineral in nature; most green quartz is heat-treated amethyst.[25]
The largest documented single crystal of quartz was found near Itapore, Goiaz, Brazil; it measured approximately 6.1×1.5×1.5 m and weighed 39,916 kilograms.[29]
Safety
As quartz is a form of silica, it is a possible cause for concern in various workplaces. Cutting, grinding, chipping, sanding, drilling, and polishing natural and manufactured stone products can release hazardous levels of very small, crystalline silica dust particles into the air that workers breathe.[31] Crystalline silica of respirable size is a recognized human carcinogen and may lead to other diseases of the lungs such as silicosis and pulmonary fibrosis.[32][33]
History
The word “quartz” comes from the GermanQuarz(help·info),[34] which is of Slavic origin (Czech miners called it křemen). Other sources attribute the word’s origin to the Saxon word Querkluftertz, meaning cross-vein ore.[35]
Quartz is the most common material identified as the mystical substance maban in Australian Aboriginal mythology. It is found regularly in passage tomb cemeteries in Europe in a burial context, such as Newgrange or Carrowmore in Ireland. The Irish word for quartz is grianchloch, which means ‘sunstone’. Quartz was also used in Prehistoric Ireland, as well as many other countries, for stone tools; both vein quartz and rock crystal were knapped as part of the lithic technology of the prehistoric peoples.[36]
While jade has been since earliest times the most prized semi-precious stone for carving in East Asia and Pre-Columbian America, in Europe and the Middle East the different varieties of quartz were the most commonly used for the various types of jewelry and hardstone carving, including engraved gems and cameo gems, rock crystal vases, and extravagant vessels. The tradition continued to produce objects that were very highly valued until the mid-19th century, when it largely fell from fashion except in jewelry. Cameo technique exploits the bands of color in onyx and other varieties.
Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder believed quartz to be water ice, permanently frozen after great lengths of time.[37] (The word “crystal” comes from the Greek word κρύσταλλος, “ice”.) He supported this idea by saying that quartz is found near glaciers in the Alps, but not on volcanic mountains, and that large quartz crystals were fashioned into spheres to cool the hands. This idea persisted until at least the 17th century. He also knew of the ability of quartz to split light into a spectrum.
In the 17th century, Nicolas Steno‘s study of quartz paved the way for modern crystallography. He discovered that regardless of a quartz crystal’s size or shape, its long prism faces always joined at a perfect 60° angle.[38]
Efforts to synthesize quartz began in the mid nineteenth century as scientists attempted to create minerals under laboratory conditions that mimicked the conditions in which the minerals formed in nature: German geologist Karl Emil von Schafhäutl (1803–1890)[47] was the first person to synthesize quartz when in 1845 he created microscopic quartz crystals in a pressure cooker.[48] However, the quality and size of the crystals that were produced by these early efforts were poor.[49]
By the 1930s, the electronics industry had become dependent on quartz crystals. The only source of suitable crystals was Brazil; however, World War II disrupted the supplies from Brazil, so nations attempted to synthesize quartz on a commercial scale. German mineralogist Richard Nacken (1884–1971) achieved some success during the 1930s and 1940s.[50] After the war, many laboratories attempted to grow large quartz crystals. In the United States, the U.S. Army Signal Corps contracted with Bell Laboratories and with the Brush Development Company of Cleveland, Ohio to synthesize crystals following Nacken’s lead.[51][52] (Prior to World War II, Brush Development produced piezoelectric crystals for record players.) By 1948, Brush Development had grown crystals that were 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) in diameter, the largest to date.[53][54] By the 1950s, hydrothermal synthesis techniques were producing synthetic quartz crystals on an industrial scale, and today virtually all the quartz crystal used in the modern electronics industry is synthetic.
Piezoelectricity
Some types of quartz crystals have piezoelectric properties; they develop an electric potential upon the application of mechanical stress.[56] An early use of this property of quartz crystals was in phonograph pickups. One of the most common piezoelectric uses of quartz today is as a crystal oscillator. The quartz clock is a familiar device using the mineral. The resonant frequency of a quartz crystal oscillator is changed by mechanically loading it, and this principle is used for very accurate measurements of very small mass changes in the quartz crystal microbalance and in thin-film thickness monitors.
The name feldspar derives from the GermanFeldspat, a compound of the words Feld (“field”) and Spat (“flake”). Spat had long been used as the word for “a rock easily cleaved into flakes”; Feldspat was introduced in the 18th century as a more specific term, referring perhaps to its common occurrence in rocks found in fields (Urban Brückmann, 1783) or to its occurrence as “fields” within granite and other minerals (René-Just Haüy, 1804).[16] The change from Spat to -spar was influenced by the English word spar,[17] meaning a non-opaque mineral with good cleavage.[18]Feldspathic refers to materials that contain feldspar. The alternate spelling, felspar, has fallen out of use. The term ‘felsic’, meaning light colored minerals such as quartz and feldspars, is an acronymic word derived from feldspar and silica, unrelated to the redundant spelling ‘felspar’.
saver
Sand : The Never-Ending Story
From individual grains to desert dunes, from the bottom of the sea to the landscapes of Mars, and from billions of years in the past to the future, this is the extraordinary story of one of nature’s humblest, most powerful, and most ubiquitous materials. Told by a geologist with a novelist’s sense of language and narrative, Sand examines the science–sand forensics, the physics of granular materials, sedimentology, paleontology and archaeology, planetary exploration–and at the same time explores the rich human context of sand. Interwoven with tales of artists, mathematicians, explorers, and even a vampire, the story of sand is an epic of environmental construction and destruction, an adventure in staggering scales of time and distance, yet a tale that encompasses the ordinary and everyday. Sand, in fact, is all around us–it has made possible our computers, buildings and windows, toothpaste, cosmetics, and paper, and it has played dramatic roles in human history, commerce, and imagination. In this luminous, kinetic, revelatory account, we do indeed find the world in a grain of sand.
Let us start this message by paying tribute to Sibelco’s Honorary President Stanislas Emsens Sr., who passed away in January 2018 at the age of ninety-one. Acknowledged as the father of Sibelco, it is impossible to overstate Stany’s influence during 52 years of active management, in which time he led the incredible growth of Sibelco from a Belgian silica sand business to a truly international multi-mineral group. His forward-vision and dedication were an inspiration to all of us, and his wisdom and guidance will be sorely missed. This has been a year of transformational change and significant progress for Sibelco as we made good headway in the implementation of the new strategy we defined towards the end of 2016. Working together as one global team, we achieved key milestones against each element of our vision to be the best global material solutions company; market-driven, operationally excellent, with a compelling culture. The results of our efforts were reflected in an improved financial performance. Against 2016, EBITDA increased by 26% to €541m, whilst Net Cash Flow (before dividend and growth capex) was up nearly 49% to €371m. Revenue was €3.1bn compared with €2.7bn last year.
Yesterday the American shale sand supplier Fairmount Santrol Holdings Inc announced a planned merge with Unimin Corp in a cash-and-stock deal. Unimin Corp is a wholly owned subsidiary of Belgian mining company SCR-Sibelco NV. The deal is expected to close by the middle of next year.
Unimin received financing from Barclays Bank and BNP Paribas for the merge. Together, the two companies will become one of the largest suppliers of sand for use in hydraulic fracturing to shale oil and gas producers with about $2 billion in annual revenue. Fairmount shareholders will receive $170 million in cash and ownership of about 35 percent of the new company, while Unimin will own the rest.
“Together we will serve our customers more efficiently and effectively with a broader and more diverse product offering, greater technical expertise, improved scale and geographic diversity and an expanded logistics platform,” Fairmount Chief Executive Jenniffer Deckard commented on the merge. Deckard is expected to be the CEO of the new company.
HOUSTON (Reuters) – Fairmount Santrol Holdings Inc said on Tuesday it would sell itself to Unimin Corp in a cash-and-stock deal to create one of the largest suppliers of sand for use in hydraulic fracturing to shale oil and gas producers.
The deal, which is expected to close by the middle of next year, will create a company with about $2 billion in annual revenue and will supply more than 45 million tons of sand annually. The new company will also supply industrial coatings.
Sand, known as proppant in the oil industry, is used as part of the fracking process to hold open tiny cracks in shale rock in order to allow hydrocarbon molecules to escape. Oil companies typically shop for various shapes and sizes of sand to suit their geology. That has made the sand industry appealing to investors in recent years.
“Together we will serve our customers more efficiently and effectively with a broader and more diverse product offering, greater technical expertise, improved scale and geographic diversity and an expanded logistics platform,” Fairmount Chief Executive Jenniffer Deckard said in a statement.
Deckard is expected to be CEO of the new company, which has not yet been named.
The combined company “should bring more discipline and pricing power,” Jefferies LLC oilfield service analyst Brad Handler wrote in a report on Tuesday. The merged business would be able to generate strong cash flow and pay down debt, which he estimated to be about $1.6 billion.
Fairmount shareholders will receive $170 million in cash and own about 35 percent of the new company after the deal closes. Unimin, a division of Belgium-based SCR-Sibelco NV, will own the rest.
Shares of Fairmount rose as much as 6.9 percent after the deal was disclosed before finishing up 1.4 percent at $5.11 on Tuesday.
Unimin received financing from Barclays Bank and BNP Paribas for the deal.
Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Susan Thomas and Peter Cooney
Watch The World’s Biggest Tunnel Boring Machines From The USA And China. In this video, you’ll see Giant Tunnel Boring Machines. These so-called tunnel boring machines are so great when it comes to digging the ground because, they are much safer to use and can only make less disturbance to the surrounding ground. And aside from that, these machines are able to produce smooth walls in the tunnel when used in digging the ground for tunneling.
39 million tonnes of raw sewage floods through London’s rivers every year causing a huge stink in the city. The Victorian sewer system can’t cope with volumes and a new super sewer must be built. To do this, a tunnel boring machine must be brought in to excavate underground. For more awe inspiring documentaries, subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZSE… Welcome to Reel Truth. Science the home of inspiring documentaries from the scientific and medical world. Here you can find full length documentaries to discover and explore. #dirtygreatmachines#heavyequipment#reeltruthscience
spacer
Subterrene – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A subterrene (Latin: subterrina, Russian: Подземная лодка) is a vehicle that travels underground (through solid rock/soil) much as a submarine travels underwater, either by mechanical drilling, or by melting its way forward. Subterrenes existed first in fiction as mechanical drillers,[citation needed]with real-world thermal designs and examples following in the second half of the 20th century.
Fictional subterrenes are often depicted as cylindrical in shape with conical drill heads at one or both ends, sometimes with some kind of tank-tread for propulsion, and described either as leaving an empty tunnel behind it, or as filling the space behind it with mining debris such as the Thunderbirds Mole. The plausibility of such machines has declined with the advent of the real-world tunnel boring machines, which demonstrate the reality of the boring task. Tunnel boring machine themselves are not usually considered to be subterrenes, possibly because they lack the secondary attributes – mobility and independence – that are normally applied to vehicles.
A real-world, mobile subterrene must work thermally, using very high temperature and immense pressure to melt and push through rock. The front of the machine is equipped with a stationary drill tip which is kept at 1,300–1,700 °F (700–930 °C). The molten rock is pushed around the edges as the vehicle is forced forward, and cools to a glass-like lining of the tunnel.Massive amounts of energyare required to heat the drill head, supplied via nuclear power or electricity. Patents issued in the 1970s[1] indicate that U.S. scientists had planned to use nuclear power to liquefy lithium metal and circulate it to the front of the machine (drill). An onboard nuclear reactor can permit a truly independent subterrene, but cooling the reactor is a difficult problem.[2] The Soviet Union is purported to have built such a “battle mole”, which operated until its onboard reactor failed.[3]
On line information presents research that was funded by the United States Government for the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories University of California, Los Alamos, New Mexico for a project Camelot under the heading Systems and Cost Analysis for a Nuclear Subterrene Tunneling Machine. A patent was subsequently issued under number 3,693,731 on September 26, 1972[4].
The design concepts fall into similar designs of current technology of our nuclear submarine fleet and existing tunnel boring technology as used in the Channel Tunnel between England and France, but with the added feature of melting rock for the tunnel wall lining.
THIS IS CLEAR PROOF THAT PHIL SCHNEIDER WAS TELLING THE TRUTH!!! EVERYTHING IN THE ABOVE ARCTICLE VERIFIES EVERY WORD HE SAID ABOUT THE TUNNELS, LOS ALAMOS, THE DRILLING MACHINE THAT LEAVES THE SMOOTH AS GLASS WALLS AS IT BORES THROUGH THE EARTH!!
From a 17-mile-long particle accelerator to a football-field–sized space observatory, here are seven massive machines that have made an equally huge impact on how we build, how we observe our universe, and how we lift rockets into space. We’ve also included a bonus machine: a technological marvel-to-be that may be just as influential once it’s completed.
The Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator located at CERN outside of Geneva, Switzerland, is the largest machine in the world: It has a circumference of almost 17 miles and took around a decade to build. The tubes of the LHC are a vacuum; superconducting magnets guide and accelerate two high-energy particle beams, which are moving in opposite directions, to near-light-speed. When the beams collide, scientists use the data to find the answers to some of the most basic questions of physics and the laws that govern the universe we live in.
Since the LHC started up in 2008, scientists have made numerous groundbreaking discoveries, including finding the once-theoretical Higgs boson particle—a.k.a. the “God” particle—which helps give other particles mass. Scientists had been chasing the Higgs boson for five decades. The discovery illuminates the early development of the universe, including how particles gained mass after the Big Bang. Scientists are already working on the LHC’s successor, which will be three times its size and seven times more powerful.
Built in 1965, NASA’s crawler-transporters are two of the largest vehicles ever constructed: They weigh 2400 tons each and burn 150 gallons of diesel per mile. In contrast, the average semi truck gets roughly 6.5 miles per gallon. The vehicles’ first job was to move Saturn V rockets—which took us to the moon and measured 35 stories tall when fully constructed—from the massive Vehicle Assembly Building (the largest single-room building in the world) to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. The 4.2-mile trip was a slow one; the transporters traveled at a rate of 1 mph to ensure the massive rockets didn’t topple over. Without a vehicle to move rockets from the spot they were stacked to the launch pad, we never could have gotten off the ground, much less to the moon.
After our moon missions, the crawler-transporters were adapted to service the Space Shuttle program, and moved the shuttles from 1981 to 2003. Since the retirement of the orbiters, these long-serving machines are once again being repurposed to transport NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS), which, at 38 stories tall, will be the biggest rocket ever constructed when it’s ready, hopefully in a few years (the timeline is in flux due to budgetary issues).
Three football fields could fit inside the National Ignition Facility, which holds the largest, most energetic, and most precise laser in the world (it also has the distinction of being the world’s largest optical instrument). NIF—which took about a decade to build and opened in 2009—is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. Its lasers are used to create conditions not unlike those within the cores of stars and giant planets, which helps scientists to gain understanding about these areas of the universe. The NIF is also being used to pursue the goal of nuclear fusion. If we can crack the code for this reaction that powers stars, we’ll achieve unlimited clean energy for our planet.
“Laser” is an acronymfor light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. A laser is created when the electrons in atoms in special glasses, crystals, or gases absorb energy from an electrical current or another laser and become “excited.” The excited electrons move from a lower-energy orbit to a higher-energy orbit around the atom’s nucleus. When they return to their normal or “ground” state, the electrons emit photons (particles of light).
These photons are all at the same wavelength and are “coherent,” meaning the crests and troughs of the light waves are all in lockstep. In contrast, ordinary visible light comprises multiple wavelengths and is not coherent.
Laser light is different from normal light in other ways as well. First, its light contains only one wavelength (one specific color). The particular wavelength of light is determined by the amount of energy released when the excited electron drops to a lower orbit. Second, laser light is directional. Whereas a laser generates a very tight beam, a flashlight produces light that is diffuse. Because laser light is coherent, it stays focused for vast distances, even to the moon and back. spacer
The National Ignition Facility has now been in operation for 10 years, but how did such an extraordinary facility come to be built? The journey to NIF was an epic one, resulting in a facility that has changed the face of science forever.
Stay Tuned
In NIF, as in most large lasers, intense flashes of white light from giant flashlamps “pump” electrons in large slabs of laser glass to a higher-energy state that lasts only about one-millionth of a second. A small pulse of laser light “tuned” to the excited electrons’ energy is directed through the glass slabs. This laser pulse stimulates the electrons to drop to their lower, or ground, energy states and emit a laser photon of exactly the same wavelength.
An optical switch traps the low-energy laser pulse in the main amplifier for four passes through the laser glass slabs. Mirrors at both ends of the glass amplifier cause the photons to travel back and forth through the glass, stimulating more electrons to drop to their lower energy states and emit photons. This process produces huge numbers of photons of the same wavelength and direction—an extremely bright and straight beam of light. In this way the initial low-energy pulse is amplified by more than a quadrillion times to create 192 highly energetic, tightly focused laser beams that converge in the center of the Target Chamber.
Lasers Are Everywhere
Lasers can be tiny constituents of microchips or as immense as NIF, which is ten stories high and as wide as three football fields. Lasers are found in a dazzling range of products and technologies, including CD and DVD players, metal-cutting machines, measuring systems, and eye and cosmetic surgery. Early lasers could produce peak powers of some 10,000 watts. Modern lasers can produce pulses that are billions of times more powerful. Scientists have demonstrated NIF’s ability to generate more than 500 trillion watts of power.
Some lasers, such as ruby lasers, emit short pulses of light. Others, like helium–neon gas lasers or liquid dye lasers, emit light that is continuous. NIF, like the ruby laser, emits pulses of light lasting only billionths of a second.
Laser light does not need to be visible. NIF beams start out as invisible infrared light and then pass through special optics that convert them to visible green light and then to invisible, high-energy ultraviolet light for optimum interaction with the target.
4. BERTHA THE TUNNEL BORER
spacer When Seattle decided it needed a giant tunnel to replace an aging highway through the middle of the city, the city contracted with Hitachi Zosen Corporation to build the biggest tunnel boring machine in the world to do the job. The scope of Bertha’s work had no precedent in modern-day digging, given the dense, abrasive glacial soil and bedrock it had to chew through.
In 2013, Bertha—named after Bertha Knight Landes, Seattle’s first female mayor—was tasked with building a tunnel that would be big enough to carry four lanes of traffic (a two-lane, double-decker road). Bertha needed to carve through 1.7 miles of rock, and just 1000 feet in, the 57-foot, 6559-ton machine ran into a steel pipe casing that damaged it. Many predicted that Bertha was doomed, but after a massive, on-the-spot repair operation by Hitachi Zosen that took a year-and-a-half, the borer was up and running again.
In April 2017, Bertha completed its work, and engineers started the process of dismantling it; its parts will be used in future tunnel boring machines. Bertha set an example for what is possible in future urban tunnel work—but it’s unlikely that tunnel boring machines will get much bigger than Bertha because of the sheer weight of the machine and the amount of soil it can move at once. Bertha’s tunnel is scheduled to open in 2019.
DARPA is funding breakthroughs in tunneling. The Underminer project aims to demonstrate the feasibility of rapidly constructing tactical tunnel networks to provide secure logistics infrastructure to pre-position supplies or resupply troops as they move through an area.
General Electric Research Center and Colorado School of Mines will focus on development of an integrated solution for Underminer technology and operational needs.
TUNNEL BORING MACHINE AI Mike Mooney and his Colorado School of Mines team are using AI to characterize ground conditions, learn how to tunnel really fast, and minimize tunneling-induced building deformation.
Tunnel boring machines (TBMs) excavate through highly uncertain and poorly characterized heterogeneous soil and rock. TBM interaction with the ground is very complex, with dozens of integrated processes governing the efficiency and effectiveness of tunnel construction. Such complex processes in highly unknown environments are ideal for AI intelligent learning, a process whereby the TBM learns-while-doing, continuously improving its performance to best achieve the tunneling objectives. In this research we are using artificial intelligence techniques and constrained optimization to learn and implement the best tunneling strategy for the encountered ground.
RAPID TUNNELING There will be the development of rapid tunneling.
Boring Company Tunnel Machines Elon Musks Boring Company is not directly involved in the DARPA project. They are leaders in developing faster tunneling.
The first three boring machines used by The Boring Company are:
Godot, a conventional tunnel boring machine made by Canadian company Lovat, which is used for research purposes. Line-storm, a highly modified conventional boring machine. In February 2019, Elon Musk estimated in a tweet that Line-storm would be active “in a month or so”. Prufrock is a BoringCompany designed machine. It is slated to support a 15x improvement in tunneling speed over the existing state of the art in 2017. It has the same diameter as a Dragon spacecraft (3.7 metres (12 ft)). In February 2020, Prufrock was shown assembled in a Twitter post.
Colorado School of Mines is also looking at Large-Diameter Tunnel Lining Design, Dynamic Risk Mapping and Midtown Immersed Tube Tunnel Analysis.
Sandia National Laboratories will conduct technology exploration and integration to address current process and system limitations.
The performers will focus on tunneling approaches, downhole sensing, and operations concepts. Underminer seeks to merge breakthroughs in horizontal drilling, trenchless boring technologies, and robotics to create a set of systems allowing consistent underground access.
Fast creation of tactical tunnels could benefit contingency operations such as rapid ammunition resupply, rescue missions and other functions.
Tunneling Industry
Recent years have seen significant advances in tunneling equipment and materials. TBM (Tunnel Boring Machines) and microtunneling equipment with enhanced data acquisitions, cutter/tool wear monitoring and replacement capabilities. All forms of tunnel lining — precast segmental, cast-in-place, and shotcrete — have benefited from advances in steel and synthetic fiber.
SOURCES- DARPA, Colorado School of Mines, Tunneling Online, Boring Company Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
The international space station is a highly efficient machine, equipped with instrumentation and life support equipment, that has kept humans alive in the inhospitable environment of low-Earth orbit since November 2, 2000. It’s the biggest satellite orbiting the Earth made by humans. The major components were sent into space over a two-year period, but construction has slowly continued over the last decade, with astronauts adding the Columbus science laboratory and Japanese science module. The first module, Zarya, was just 41.2 feet by 13.5 feet; now, the ISS is 356 feet by 240 feet, which is slightly larger than a football field. The station currently has about 32,333 cubic feet of pressurized volume the crew can move about in. That’s about the same area as a Boeing 747 (though much of the ISS’s space is taken up by equipment). The U.S.’s solar panels are as large as eight basketball courts.
From the space station, scientists have made such important discoveries as what extended zero-G does to the human body, where cosmic rays come from, and how protein crystals can be used to treat cancer. Though NASA expects the most modern modules of the ISS to be usable well into the 2030s, by 2025 the agency may begin “transitioning” much of its ISS operations—and costs—to the private sector [PDF] with an eye on expanding the commercial potential of space.
6. LIGO GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DETECTOR
That looks exactly like the spiral in the sky over Norway…
What Is This Mysterious Spiral Anomaly in the Norwegian Sky?December 9, 2009 Norway awaiting the arrival of Barack Obama see a strange phenomenon arriving out of the eastern sky. You know the “spiral” is another symbol that is very significant to the Satanists/Kabbalists/Illuminati/Magicians.
The Laser Inferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is actually made up of four different facilities—two laboratories and two detectors located 2000 miles apart, in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. The detectors, which took about five years to build and were inaugurated in 1999, are identical L-shaped vacuum chambers that are about 2.5 miles long and operate in unison. The mission of these machines is to detect ripples in the fabric of spacetime known as gravitational waves. Predicted in 1915 by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravitational waves were entirely theoretical until September 2015, when LIGO detected them for the first time. Not only did this provide further confirmation of general relativity, it opened up entirely new areas of research such as gravitational wave astronomy. The reason the two detectors are so far from each other is to reduce the possibility of false positives; both facilities must detect a potential gravitational wave before it is investigated.
Image credit: The SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) Project
LIGO Opens New Window on the Universe with Observation of Gravitational Waves from Colliding Black Holes
WASHINGTON, DC/Cascina, Italy
For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetimecalled gravitational waves, arriving at the earth from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe. This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos.
Gravitational waves carry information about their dramatic origins and about the nature of gravity that cannot otherwise be obtained. Physicists have concluded that the detected gravitational waves were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole. This collision of two black holes had been predicted but never observed.
SORRY, I CALL BULLS__T
The gravitational waves were detected on September 14, 2015 at 5:51 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (09:51 UTC) by both of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, USA. The LIGO Observatories are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and were conceived, built, and are operated by Caltech and MIT. The discovery, accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters, was made by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (which includes the GEO Collaboration and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy) and the Virgo Collaboration using data from the two LIGO detectors.
Based on the observed signals, LIGO scientists estimate that the black holes for this event were about 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun, and the event took place 1.3 billion years ago. About 3 times the mass of the sun was converted into gravitational waves in a fraction of a second—with a peak power output about 50 times that of the whole visible universe. By looking at the time of arrival of the signals—the detector in Livingston recorded the event 7 milliseconds before the detector in Hanford—scientists can say that the source was located in the Southern Hemisphere.
According to general relativity, a pair of black holes orbiting around each other lose energy through the emission of gravitational waves, causing them to gradually approach each other over billions of years, and then much more quickly in the final minutes. During the final fraction of a second, the two black holes collide into each other at nearly one-half the speed of light and form a single more massive black hole, converting a portion of the combined black holes’ mass to energy, according to Einstein’s formula E=mc2. This energy is emitted as a final strong burst of gravitational waves. It is these gravitational waves that LIGO has observed.
The existence of gravitational waves was first demonstrated in the 1970s and 80s by Joseph Taylor, Jr., and colleagues. Taylor and Russell Hulse discovered in 1974 a binary system composed of a pulsar in orbit around a neutron star. Taylor and Joel M. Weisberg in 1982 found that the orbit of the pulsar was slowly shrinking over time because of the release of energy in the form of gravitational waves. For discovering the pulsar and showing that it would make possible this particular gravitational wave measurement, Hulse and Taylor were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993.
The new LIGO discovery is the first observation of gravitational waves themselves, made by measuring the tiny disturbances the waves make to space and time as they pass through the earth.
“Our observation of gravitational waves accomplishes an ambitious goal set out over 5 decades ago to directly detect this elusive phenomenon and better understand the universe, and, fittingly, fulfills Einstein’s legacy on the 100th anniversary of his general theory of relativity,” says Caltech’s David H. Reitze, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory.
The discovery was made possible by the enhanced capabilities of Advanced LIGO, a major upgrade that increases the sensitivity of the instruments compared to the first generation LIGO detectors, enabling a large increase in the volume of the universe probed—and the discovery of gravitational waves during its first observation run. The US National Science Foundation leads in financial support for Advanced LIGO. Funding organizations in Germany (Max Planck Society), the U.K. (Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC) and Australia (Australian Research Council) also have made significant commitments to the project. Several of the key technologies that made Advanced LIGO so much more sensitive have been developed and tested by the German UK GEO collaboration. Significant computer resources have been contributed by the AEI Hannover Atlas Cluster, the LIGO Laboratory, Syracuse University, and the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. Several universities designed, built, and tested key components for Advanced LIGO: The Australian National University, the University of Adelaide, the University of Florida, Stanford University, Columbia University of the City of New York, and Louisiana State University.
“In 1992, when LIGO’s initial funding was approved, it represented the biggest investment the NSF had ever made,” says France Córdova, NSF director. “It was a big risk. But the National Science Foundation is the agency that takes these kinds of risks. We support fundamental science and engineering at a point in the road to discovery where that path is anything but clear. We fund trailblazers. It’s why the U.S. continues to be a global leader in advancing knowledge.”
LIGO research is carried out by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), a group of more than 1000 scientists from universities around the United States and in 14 other countries. More than 90 universities and research institutes in the LSC develop detector technology and analyze data; approximately 250 students are strong contributing members of the collaboration. The LSC detector network includes the LIGO interferometers and the GEO600 detector. The GEO team includes scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, AEI), Leibniz Universität Hannover, along with partners at the University of Glasgow, Cardiff University, the University of Birmingham, other universities in the United Kingdom, and the University of the Balearic Islands in Spain.
“This detection is the beginning of a new era: The field of gravitational wave astronomy is now a reality,” says Gabriela González, LSC spokesperson and professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University.
LIGO was originally proposed as a means of detecting these gravitational waves in the 1980s by Rainer Weiss, professor of physics, emeritus, from MIT; Kip Thorne, Caltech’s Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, emeritus; and Ronald Drever, professor of physics, emeritus, also from Caltech.
“The description of this observation is beautifully described in the Einstein theory of general relativity formulated 100 years ago and comprises the first test of the theory in strong gravitation. It would have been wonderful to watch Einstein’s face had we been able to tell him,” says Weiss.
“With this discovery, we humans are embarking on a marvelous new quest: the quest to explore the warped side of the universe—objects and phenomena that are made from warped spacetime. Colliding black holes and gravitational waves are our first beautiful examples,” says Thorne.
Virgo research is carried out by the Virgo Collaboration, consisting of more than 250 physicists and engineers belonging to 19 different European research groups: 6 from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France; 8 from the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy; 2 in The Netherlands with Nikhef; the Wigner RCP in Hungary; the POLGRAW group in Poland; and the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), the laboratory hosting the Virgo detector near Pisa in Italy. WOW, WHERE DOES ALL THIS MONEY COME FROM TO PAY ALL THESE GUYS AND MAINTAIN ALL THIS EQUIPMENT?
Fulvio Ricci, Virgo Spokesperson, notes that, “This is a significant milestone for physics, but more importantly merely the start of many new and exciting astrophysical discoveries to come with LIGO and Virgo.”
Bruce Allen, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), adds, “Einstein thought gravitational waves were too weak to detect, and didn’t believe in black holes. But I don’t think he’d have minded being wrong!”
“The Advanced LIGO detectors are a tour de force of science and technology, made possible by a truly exceptional international team of technicians, engineers, and scientists,” says David Shoemaker of MIT, the project leader for Advanced LIGO. “We are very proud that we finished this NSF-funded project on time and on budget.”
At each observatory, the two-and-a-half-mile (4-km) long L-shaped LIGO interferometer uses laser light split into two beams that travel back and forth down the arms (four-foot diameter tubes kept under a near-perfect vacuum). The beams are used to monitor the distance between mirrors precisely positioned at the ends of the arms. According to Einstein’s theory, the distance between the mirrors will change by an infinitesimal amount when a gravitational wave passes by the detector. A change in the lengths of the arms smaller than one-ten-thousandth the diameter of a proton (10-19 meter) can be detected.
“To make this fantastic milestone possible took a global collaboration of scientists—laser and suspension technology developed for our GEO600 detector was used to help make Advanced LIGO the most sophisticated gravitational wave detector ever created,” says Sheila Rowan, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Glasgow.
Independent and widely separated observatories are necessary to determine the direction of the event causing the gravitational waves, and also to verify that the signals come from space and are not from some other local phenomenon.
Toward this end, the LIGO Laboratory is working closely with scientists in India at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, and the Institute for Plasma to establish a third Advanced LIGO detector on the Indian subcontinent. Awaiting approval by the government of India, it could be operational early in the next decade. The additional detector will greatly improve the ability of the global detector network to localize gravitational-wave sources.
“Hopefully this first observation will accelerate the construction of a global network of detectors to enable accurate source location in the era of multi-messenger astronomy,” says David McClelland, professor of physics and director of the Centre for Gravitational Physics at the Australian National University. ARE THEY KIDDING???
The Russians originally had a rival to the U.S. Space Shuttle program: a reusable winged spacecraft of their own called the Buran—and in the 1980s, they developed the AN-225 Mriya in order to transport it. With a wingspan the size of the Statue of Liberty, a 640-ton weight, six engines, and the ability to lift into the air nearly a half-million pounds, it’s the longest and heaviest plane ever built. Mriya first flew in 1988, and since the Buran was mothballed in 1990 after just one flight (due to the breakup of the Soviet Union rather than the plane’s capabilities), the AN-225 has only been used sparingly.
The monster plane has inspired new ideas. In 2017, Airspace Industry Corporation of China signed an agreement with Antonov, the AN-225’s manufacturer, to built a fleet of aircraft based on the AN-225’s design that would carry commercial satellites on their backs and launch them into space. Currently, virtually all satellites are launched from rockets. Meanwhile, Stratolaunch, a company overseen by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is building a plane that will be wider (but not longer) than Mriya. The giant plane will carry a launch vehicle headed for low-Earth orbit.
BONUS: 10,000-YEAR CLOCK
spacer This forward-thinking project, funded by Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, focuses on reminding people about their long-term impact on the world. Instead of a traditional clock measuring hours, minutes, and seconds, the Clock of the Long Now measures times in years and centuries. The clock, which will be built inside a mountain on a plot of land in western Texas owned by Bezos, will tick once per year, with a century hand that advances just once every 100 years. The cuckoo on the clock will emerge just once per millennium. Construction began on the clock in early 2018. When this massive clock is completed—timeline unknown—it will be 500 feet high. What will be the impact of this one? Only the people of the 120th century will be able to answer that question.
SKB’s underground hard rock laboratory at Äspö north of Oskarshamn is where much of the research about the final repository for spent nuclear fuel is taking place. This is where we test different technological solutions in full scale in a realistic setting.
The Äspö Laboratory is a unique research facility and there are only a few like it in the rest of the world. Almost 500 metres underground, we conduct experiments in collaboration with Swedishand international experts. This research means that we can study the interaction of bentonite clay and copper canisters with the rock in realistic conditions. Here experiments are made to identify the role of the rock as a barrier. This can, for instance, concern how the rock slows down the movement of radioactive substances or how microbes affect conditions at this depth.
Underground dress rehearsal
The laboratory is not only used for experimental field trials. It could be described as a dress rehearsal for the construction of the Spent Fuel Repository. We develop and test different technologies and methods for studying rock, designing the repository and depositing the canisters. The machinery and equipment we are testing are, for instance, totally unique.
In many respects the Äspö Laboratory resembles the future spent fuel repository. There are tunnels, emplacement holes, copper canisters, clay and machines. But the two facilities differ on one important point – there is of course no spent nuclear fuel at the laboratory.
Cooperation across national borders
Much of the research we do is undertaken in collaboration with other colleges, universities and organisations. There is also extensive collaboration when it comes to sharing technological expertise and experiences with SKB’s peer organisations in the rest of the world. Some of the research at the Äspö Laboratory takes place within the EU’s Framework programme for Research and Technological Development.
It is also possible for other organisations to carry out their own research in the Äspö Laboratory. This can be organised either through the Nova Research and Development Platform or through SKB’s subsidiary, SKB International. Since 2008 a special research group at Linnaeus University has been linked to the Äspö Laboratory. Their research focuses on environmental geochemistry.
More than three decades of know-how – Valuable knowledge
This is SKB International in short
SKB International helped to reduce time spans, costs and risks in national programmes in more than 20 countries since 1984. And the work continues.
We provide technology and management support for the safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste.
Final repository for spent nuclear fuel
On March 16th 2011, after three decades of carrying out research, developing technology and conducting surveys, SKB applied to the authorities for permission to build a repository for spent nuclear fuel in Forsmark and an encapsulation plant in Oskarshamn. It basically concerns the final solution for the spent fuel from Swedish nuclear power plants. spacer Final repository for spent nuclear fuel
Film about how the spent nuclear fuel will be stored in Sweden.
21 They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
22 For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.
23 I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them.
24 They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.
25 The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs. Deuteronomy 32
It is quite possible that all the nuclear waste they are burying under deep in the earth is going to be responsible for the fire that will ultimately destroy the entire world.
Spacer
IF you have not seen my articles on Rock Cairns, you should check them out. There is so much more information in them.
Quartz belongs to the trigonal crystal system. The ideal crystal shape is a six-sided prism terminating with six-sided pyramids at each end. In nature quartz crystals are often twinned (with twin right-handed and left-handed quartz crystals), distorted, or so intergrown with adjacent crystals of quartz or other minerals as to only show part of this shape, or to lack obvious crystal faces altogether and appear massive. Well-formed crystals typically form in a ‘bed’ that has unconstrained growth into a void; usually the crystals are attached at the other end to a matrix and only one termination pyramid is present. However, doubly terminated crystals do occur where they develop freely without attachment, for instance within gypsum. A quartz geode is such a situation where the void is approximately spherical in shape, lined with a bed of crystals pointing inward.
Quarz(help·info),[34] which is of Slavic origin (Czech miners called it křemen). Other sources attribute the word’s origin to the Saxon word Querkluftertz, meaning cross-vein ore.[35]
Quartz belongs to the 
Sand : The Never-Ending Story
From individual grains to desert dunes, from the bottom of the sea to the landscapes of Mars, and from billions of years in the past to the future, this is the extraordinary story of one of nature’s humblest, most powerful, and most ubiquitous materials. Told by a geologist with a novelist’s sense of language and narrative, Sand examines the science–sand forensics, the physics of granular materials, sedimentology, paleontology and archaeology, planetary exploration–and at the same time explores the rich human context of sand. Interwoven with tales of artists, mathematicians, explorers, and even a vampire, the story of sand is an epic of environmental construction and destruction, an adventure in staggering scales of time and distance, yet a tale that encompasses the ordinary and everyday. Sand, in fact, is all around us–it has made possible our computers, buildings and windows, toothpaste, cosmetics, and paper, and it has played dramatic roles in human history, commerce, and imagination. In this luminous, kinetic, revelatory account, we do indeed find the world in a grain of sand.![Sand: The Never-Ending Story by [Michael Welland]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41WSx6VNtJL.jpg)
Sand : The Never-Ending Story
