Current Events #7

- Mining the Seafloor for Rare-Earth Minerals
- By: William J. Broad
- Published: November 8, 2010
- http://www.nytimes.com/
- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/science/09seafloor.html?ref=asia
- Mining the Seafloor for Manganese Nodules.
- The article discusses about mining the seafloor for manganese nodules and the profit that could be gained from it. Over the past few decades, people have been trying to gather manganese nodules that lies beneath the sea. Manganese nodules are rocks that contain nickel, copper, cobalt, and other elements. Despite investment and study placed into building machines to gather these rocks, it has never been profitable. Recently people has been talking and getting excited over the news that it could become a success. A paper by Dr. Hein and his colleagues from Germany has given people a new hope for the success in mining the seafloor. Even with the paper which talks about the harvesting of nodules, it is still questionable whether it can be profitable. Further into the article, it talks about the appliances that are created from nodules such as magnets and lasers.
- I chose this article because of its title. I was looking through a list of articles when I came across the title of this article, "Mining the Seafloor for Rare-Earth Minerals". I was curious over what kind of rare minerals the article was talking about. Reading the article, I was surprise to see that the minerals were nickel, copper, cobalt,etc. These didn't seem as rare to me as the title implied and I continued to read on.
- In class I have been learning about the Industrial Revolution. I learned that the Industrial Revolution begins in England and one of the main reasons for its start in England is because of its natural resources. Reading the article reminded me of the Industrial Revolution. Even in the present, time people are mining for minerals just as the people in England was mining for minerals during the Industrial Revolution. If seabed miners are able to successful mine the nodules while being able to gain profit, a new revolution might take place for the mining of these rocks.