4 ms·

Would it be better for billions of tons of it to just sit locked away in the Earth and never see the light of day?

iamgopal 3y ago
[flagged]
Joker_vD 3y ago
Or consider iron. Almost all of it has actually sank into the Earth's core, the deposits we extract it from are but tiniest scraps of the metal left on the face of the planet. So irreverent!
- gravescale 3y ago
  Ah well, but we could always get as much more of it as we want with an exciting enough mining project! And if that fails, just sit tight and it'll be most of the universe for a few quadrillion years, somewhere between "cold, dark and quiet" and "very cold and very dark and very quiet"
- acchow 3y ago
  We could probably even make more iron in a fusion reactor. But anything heavier than iron would probably require a supernova.
  - laurencerowe 3y ago
    I don't think there's anything stopping us from making trace amounts of elements heavier than iron. The superheavy elements have only been synthesised in the laboratory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheavy_element https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheavy_element
  - namibj 3y ago
    Way easier to just electrolyze olivine, of which we have plenty. Downside is that you actually get more silicon and magnesium out of it, and those are higher strength each than the iron you get from each chunk of rock. I.e., if you wanted to use them to make a bridge, it'd be mostly of something like silicon fiber reinforced magnesium instead of steel. Unless refining them to sufficient purity turns out to be too difficult to be worth it.
gravescale 3y ago
It kind of feels like at least you "should" stick it to something that you expect will last a substantial amount of time, rather then something that is entirely expected to be gutted in, on the scale of how long a tile could practically last, relatively short order. Obviously, I know that The Market says "no", it's a few dollars a tile wholesale!
- abofh 3y ago
  Don't worry, the market corrects - what's the market price on Galapagos turtle soup or dodo omelettes? Others are right - the matter is neither created nor destroyed, but you are also right, that form is/was unique, and it is at least a bit sad to know that it's unlikely to be seen again. Take from that what you will, but I take from it that the world will only be like this for a moment, and if I want to see it, the only way to encourage that is to go and see it, not hope that society will realize it needs to (or wished it had) preserve things. Whether these are the things we'll regret losing - different question, but I'm sure a british museum will hang onto one :)
  - cultofmetatron 3y ago
    > or dodo omelettes we should definitely not let it get that far....
  - abigail95 3y ago
    This comment is all over the place. Is the market for marble good or bad in this case? Is it producing an efficient outcome? Can it be made to do so? What are the non market solutions? You fault something just because it exist but give no alternative. Species like Dodo are expected to go extinct as humans flourish and move other things out of our way. All species eventually go extinct. We only exist because we out competed what came before us, which out competed what came before it. You can mourn the loss of the Dodo not existing in a zoo for you to gawk at but I find that to be on the level of complaining about a TV show being cancelled. If it filled such an essential biological niche that its loss is noticed (it obviously wasn't - hundreds of years went by before anyone noticed it was gone) - if it were noticed, and was such a heavy loss, that's the first niche that will be filled by something else. You can't have Darwinian evolution without this. The Galapagos Giant Tortoise will never go extinct because the market for protecting and investigating and gawking at them is too strong. If that interest ever wanes the animal will no longer occupy a useful niche and will cease to exist, unless it adapts.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
We’d at least be able to clad the interiors of the generation ships with them 10,000 years from now if we did

[flagged]

Or consider iron. Almost all of it has actually sank into the Earth's core, the deposits we extract it from are but tiniest scraps of the metal left on the face of the planet. So irreverent!

gravescale 3y ago
Ah well, but we could always get as much more of it as we want with an exciting enough mining project! And if that fails, just sit tight and it'll be most of the universe for a few quadrillion years, somewhere between "cold, dark and quiet" and "very cold and very dark and very quiet"
acchow 3y ago
We could probably even make more iron in a fusion reactor. But anything heavier than iron would probably require a supernova.
- laurencerowe 3y ago
  I don't think there's anything stopping us from making trace amounts of elements heavier than iron. The superheavy elements have only been synthesised in the laboratory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheavy_element https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheavy_element
- namibj 3y ago
  Way easier to just electrolyze olivine, of which we have plenty. Downside is that you actually get more silicon and magnesium out of it, and those are higher strength each than the iron you get from each chunk of rock. I.e., if you wanted to use them to make a bridge, it'd be mostly of something like silicon fiber reinforced magnesium instead of steel. Unless refining them to sufficient purity turns out to be too difficult to be worth it.

gravescale 3y ago

It kind of feels like at least you "should" stick it to something that you expect will last a substantial amount of time, rather then something that is entirely expected to be gutted in, on the scale of how long a tile could practically last, relatively short order. Obviously, I know that The Market says "no", it's a few dollars a tile wholesale!

abofh 3y ago
Don't worry, the market corrects - what's the market price on Galapagos turtle soup or dodo omelettes? Others are right - the matter is neither created nor destroyed, but you are also right, that form is/was unique, and it is at least a bit sad to know that it's unlikely to be seen again. Take from that what you will, but I take from it that the world will only be like this for a moment, and if I want to see it, the only way to encourage that is to go and see it, not hope that society will realize it needs to (or wished it had) preserve things. Whether these are the things we'll regret losing - different question, but I'm sure a british museum will hang onto one :)
- cultofmetatron 3y ago
  > or dodo omelettes we should definitely not let it get that far....
- abigail95 3y ago
  This comment is all over the place. Is the market for marble good or bad in this case? Is it producing an efficient outcome? Can it be made to do so? What are the non market solutions? You fault something just because it exist but give no alternative. Species like Dodo are expected to go extinct as humans flourish and move other things out of our way. All species eventually go extinct. We only exist because we out competed what came before us, which out competed what came before it. You can mourn the loss of the Dodo not existing in a zoo for you to gawk at but I find that to be on the level of complaining about a TV show being cancelled. If it filled such an essential biological niche that its loss is noticed (it obviously wasn't - hundreds of years went by before anyone noticed it was gone) - if it were noticed, and was such a heavy loss, that's the first niche that will be filled by something else. You can't have Darwinian evolution without this. The Galapagos Giant Tortoise will never go extinct because the market for protecting and investigating and gawking at them is too strong. If that interest ever wanes the animal will no longer occupy a useful niche and will cease to exist, unless it adapts.

kjkjadksj 3y ago

We’d at least be able to clad the interiors of the generation ships with them 10,000 years from now if we did