To write this whole article and not even mention circular production practices (eg full lifestyle resource management) and our resource constrained planetary context seems arrogant and stupid and undermines any heady excitement for this “progression”. What a junk article.
A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles
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Re: A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles
#112To write this whole article and not even mention circular production practices (eg full lifestyle resource management) and our resource constrained planetary context seems arrogant and stupid and undermines any heady excitement for this “progression”. What a junk article.
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Re: A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
In any stellar system like ours, where oxygen is the most abundant element, except for the hydrogen and helium that are contained mostly in the star and in the big planets, almost all metals are completely oxidized (with the exception of the siderophile elements submerged into the cores of the planets, because of their great density) and the amount of metallic substances with a natural origin that can be found in the…
To be fair we are the only creatures to make much use of anything, metal or no. That being said the metals are used by other creatures. Some might eat metal rich mud for nutritional value for example.
What those other creatures eat or use are not metals, but chemical substances that contain chemical elements that would have been metals in their pure elemental state.
For instance, many living beings, from bacteria to vertebrates make and use magnetite crystals, for sensing the magnetic field of the Earth.
Magnetite contains iron ions and pure iron is a metal. Nevertheless, magnetite is not a metal, but a ionic crystal, i.e. an insulator. Your blood contains iron and your bones contain calcium, but none of that iron or calcium is in metal form, all are oxidized ions.
There are no living beings that have metallic components. There are a few bacteria that are able to reduce to metallic form the metals that are the easiest to reduce, i.e. gold and silver. However those bacteria do not use in any way the metallic gold or silver that is precipitated outside their bodies by their activity. The reducing of gold and silver is just a defense mechanism for those bacteria, because the ions of gold or silver kill bacteria, and their precipitation when they are reduced removes them from the environment.
As I have said almost all metallic elements present close to the surface of the Earth or of any other planet of this type are oxidized, i.e. they are positive ions that are bound in various ionic substances, like oxides or sulfides, and they can be found inside the bodies of the living beings in the same state as outside (unlike carbon, nitrogen and sulfur, which are oxidized outside, but reduced inside the bodies of the living beings).
Only a few metallic elements are found also as native metals, i.e. copper, silver, gold, mercury and the platinum-group metals. Even for these metallic elements, most of them are far more abundant in oxidized forms (like sulfides or arsenides) than in metallic forms. Only gold is more abundant in metallic form than in oxidized forms, like tellurides (and that is due in good part to the fact that tellurium is also a very rare element, otherwise more gold would be found combined than in metallic form; the gold ions are extremely large, so that they cannot combine well with ions smaller than the telluride ion, like the sulfide ion that combines well with the smaller silver ions).
Re: A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles
#114One of my biggest everyday QoL upgrade is men's casual pants finally getting elastane. E: not just elastane but performance fabrics from athleisure in general, good moisture/odour/temperature control, easy to maintain etc. Some people like break in into their cotton/denim classics, but performance fabrics tend to not need break in in at all.
I'm glad there's more choice but I wish my favorite Levi's still had a 100% cotton option. After years of easy jean shopping I now have to find another brand.
weargustin.com has great selvedge jeans...a little pricey for the uniquely dyed options, but for the regular jeans they aren't bad, and they last forever.
Re: A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the thrust of your argument, but I just want to point out that wool is not environmentally neutral. Sheep are incredibly destructive and have historical caused a lot of degradation of habitats. https://www.monbiot.com/2013/05/30/sheepwrecked/
That's more a matter of scale, I think, than material? Whether it's wool or leather or plastic or cotton or hemp or flax, if you need millions or billions of units of something, it's going to incur large scale habitat loss somewhere in the world. I guess then it's a question of land use (converting ecosystems into rangeland) vs pollution (from fossil fuels and plastics).
Well, wool is particularly bad, emitting way more greenhouse gases than most other textiles for equivalent fabric output. And sheep farming has quite a shocking impact on biodiversity.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24008053/wool-marketing-e...
Re: A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trees did not evolve with bountiful access to titanium, but it would be interesting to ponder how they would have evolved on a metal planet
Carbon in the form of carbon dioxide as raw material is literally instantly available and the resulting "composite" is lightweight. This is not to say nature always considers recycling beforehand. Nature needed to invent fungi to break up this carbon dump. Carbon era is named thanks to this fact. And it's tempting to think nature "came up" with humankind to make the humongous carbon dump of the carbon era useful once…
Really, you have causation backward. Eg. the supposed Carboniferous Period was an opportunity for something to evolve which consumes wood. Many "problems" get solved by accident in this way, but many also don't - as long as they take place over a long enough timespan. If they happen too quickly, there's not enough time for living things to adapt.
Currently there is an opportunity for an industrious plastic-eating microbe to hitch a ride in every gut on the planet, deciding the winners and losers of the plastiferous period. All that means, though, is that there's a chance such a creature could appear and take advantage, not that it will happen. (Yes I know plastic-eaters have been discovered, but I'm not aware of any having an effect on the fitness of other creatures.)
Re: A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's more a matter of scale, I think, than material? Whether it's wool or leather or plastic or cotton or hemp or flax, if you need millions or billions of units of something, it's going to incur large scale habitat loss somewhere in the world. I guess then it's a question of land use (converting ecosystems into rangeland) vs pollution (from fossil fuels and plastics).
Well, wool is particularly bad, emitting way more greenhouse gases than most other textiles for equivalent fabric output. And sheep farming has quite a shocking impact on biodiversity. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24008053/wool-marketing-e...
This is interesting, thank you for sharing.
Would you happen to know where the data for this table comes from? https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/u...
Vox cites a LCA database but not a particular study or metastudy. I tried to look for it but couldn't find the exact one.
It seems to me like the kind of thing where the numbers could be drastically different depending on where you draw the boundaries (for plastics, does oil extraction and refining count?) and the sorts of impacts you consider (not just CO2E but as you mentioned, biodiversity, water, waste stream, etc.).
I'm inclined to believe the overall point of that post (sheep make a lot of methane, as any ruminant). But I'm not sure that banning wool outright would have the desirable outcome. I don't think cotton can replace wool in many situations, especially in wet outdoor environments. Would replacing it with (new) synthetics, which is the most common substitute, really be a net positive across all the impacts?
I appreciate the information, regardless!
Re: A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Papier-mache, to be exact. ;)
Afaik it wasn't paper mache, it was made of cotton fiber and used some kind of resin as a binding agent. Paper uses wood pulp.
Well, to be precise, it was a resin + cotton + wood pulp mixture.
Also, totally un-recyclable. Good riddance!
Re: A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only possible way this comment could be more satisfying to read would be if it ended with "Until now." before the camera pans to a strange planet and the movie begins
An interesting fact is that while almost all solid objects that exist in the Solar System have their origin in the condensation of gases from which the Solar System has formed, there exist also the so-called pre-solar grains. The pre-solar grains are microscopic crystals, i.e. particles of dust, which have come to the Solar System as already solid grains of dust, from other stellar systems, typically having been prop…
Is there any high quality sci-fi that explores the second type of solar systems?
Re: A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles
#120Why aren't more regular cars made of carbon fiber? Especially with EVs needing to be as efficient as possible. The BMW i3 had a carbon fiber frame and was still reasonably priced back in 2013, yet no other normal cars seem to have went this way.
Here's to hoping that Aptera becomes a regular car someday.