mining

While the term "gold prospector" still evokes the image of a weathered frontiersman biting into a rock, advances in biology have now created a prospector that more closely resembles E. coli than a grizzled Forty-Niner. By modifying a bacterium that finds gold toxic, Frank Reith, a geologist at the University of Adelaide, Australia, has created a microbe with an eye for gold that would put Deadwood's George Hearst to shame.

A team of coal miners is working hundreds of feet underground when an explosion rocks the tunnel. They scramble for an exit, but those are all blocked. The air fills with dust and gas. There's no escape ... so the survivors inflate a portable panic room, complete with an oxygen supply and air filters, and wait for help. At least that's how Jim Reuther, a senior research scientist at the R&D giant Battelle, hopes the situation pans out.

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Before NASA sends astronauts to live on the moon in 2020, per presidential mandate, the agency must first figure out what resources the lunar neighborhood has to offer. Are there stores of ice that could be melted and processed to provide oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for rocket fuel? Or is the potential fuel locked up inside rocks?