Element number 23 (symbol V) is a hard, silver-gray transition metal. Its primary use is in steel. Adding a small percentage of vanadium improves tensile strength and reduces weight. Steelmakers have been using vanadium in ferro-alloys for over 100 years.

Vanadium has multiple oxidation states and its compounds have a variety of colors. Unfortunately they are all toxic! The metal does not occur free in nature but once isolated it is very stable as it forms an oxide layer, much like aluminum.

The world produces about 100,000 tons of vanadium per year. It’s obtained as a by-product from steel-making slag and from uranium mining.

There is only one primary producer of vanadium in the United States. That company, Energy Fuels, also produces the bulk of U.S. uranium! They don’t just dig the stuff up, they also mill and process it into marketable form. Their White Mesa Mill in San Juan County, Utah is also the only place in the country that handles uranium ore. The mill looks like this and employs 150 people:

This story grabbed my attention:

Researchers at the University of Strathclyde are joining partners in Canada to develop new methods for cleaning up contaminated water from mines.

The project is aimed at removing harmful dissolved metals from the water and recovering them for reuse.

This is the sort of thing that should be happening everywhere there are mines. And there are mines everywhere, so it should be happening all over. I like that this is a partnership between the UK and Canada. Canada’s economy depends on mining.

Mining is essential but it is wasteful and polluting. Not to mention having a history—a long, storied infamy—of exploiting and brutalizing workers.

If you dig a hole in the ground and process the stuff, none of it should be wasted. It should all be used in some manner. Mining uses a very large amount of water. It’s something mining companies don’t talk about because mining’s thirst is enormous and that demand makes huge impacts on local environments.

So it’s cool that these folks are doing this stuff. Both universities receive funding from their respective governments to do the work. That’s how the system works! Government funding of science and other research is a public good. It benefits society. And it keeps our growing knowledge base intact so other people can learn from it and the human race can improve.

This is why the Orange Asshole and His Fascist Minions are terribly stupid for attacking universities. And for slashing the budgets for research and for science facilities. You don’t get smarter by crippling the very institutions that do the work of helping the human race get smarter! But Emperor Don the First isn’t interested in intellectual advancement. And that’s unfortunate.

If we want a clean energy future and clean air and water we have to do a better job mining the earth. And farming, too. And manufacturing, and building, and everything else. And that takes a lot of brainpower and a lot of places to do brain-powering. From the story:

Professor Alejandro Adem, President of NSERC, said: “International partnerships like this one are essential to tackling global challenges such as critical mineral security. By combining Canada’s expertise with the UK’s, we can accelerate innovation and advance sustainable solutions to drive economic growth, resilience, and environmental responsibility.”

NSERC stands for Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Around eight o’clock last night I saw a rainbow. The sky was boiling with clouds, including those weird mammatus-type with their bulbous pendants, and bathed in an eerie red glow. Bright yellow crepuscular rays streamed from the setting sun to almost overhead. Lightning backlit banks of black thunderheads over the hills to the south of me.

And there was a rainbow. I could see the secondary bow as well, and though they both disappeared into the heavy cloud cover as they arced upwards, the opposite end of the primary bow was clear and bright.

I thought there would be more rain. It spit a little, just enough to leave some drops on the patio concrete. And I could see virga, rain falling high in the sky that never reached the ground.

I couldn’t have captured the scene with a camera. For one, I’ve no talent for such things. That isn’t to say some of the skilled photographers I know couldn’t have made some beautiful pictures out of that material! Second, the dynamic, evolving nature of the experience was the best part. I knew what I was watching was ephemeral and would soon be washed away by darkness. That urgency to see and feel what was happening in real time right in front of me got my mind’s eye going.

These days we are absolutely buried in images. We’ve made a pornographic fetish out of picture-taking. Ask Google for a sunset or a thundershower or a mountain scene and you will be overwhelmed by all the spectacular choices. Windows 11 will give you a new image every single day if you want. All of them are astounding, high-quality, artistic creations. It’s too much. It’s like eating chocolate at every meal. It ceases to be special and thus becomes a lot less enjoyable.

Most of life we see through our mind’s eye and the only recording device we have is our chaotic, imperfect brain.

That’s OK by me. ¡Viva la imperfección!

The yuccas are in bloom:

These plants grow exceptionally well in our desert-like climate. They have stiff, fibrous leaves and stout, waxy flowers that protect them from drought and harsh sun.

They are easy to cultivate. The underground base of the plant is like a big, mutant turnip. Chop off a chunk of the stuff (it kind of looks like potato flesh) and plant it. Yuccas will emerge.

Yuccas are agaves and are native to the southern US and Mexico. The famous Joshua Tree of the Mojave desert is Yucca brevifolia. The botanical sub-family that includes all agaves and yuccas is Agavoideae and that in turn is classified as part of Asparagaceae, the asparagus family. Many older references (like Jepson) still list Agavaceae as a separate family

I’m not really sure what species is growing in our yard. I suspect it is either Yucca filamentosa (Thread Yucca or Adam’s Needle) or Yucca flaccida (Weak-Leaf Yucca). It doesn’t matter. They are really neat, low-maintenance plants that have their showy time and that time is now!

You may remember my previous post about five yards of red cinder.

Click the link to see the picture.

Today I moved the last shovelful. Actually I was using the broom and dustpan at that point! Here’s what it looks like now:

Took a bit. Two months or so. But that’s only working a few days a week and for no more than a few hours at a time. Hey, I’m a senior! I’m retired. WORK is a four-letter word.

Anyway, it feels good. Now I can use the spot for my car. I like the red staining. I wish I had not put down a tarp first. I would have liked a nice, big, round, red stain.

I cheated a little bit. I got the projects done that needed doing but a good chunk of the red rock was merely moved and stashed somewhere else. I’ve got pending projects for the rest of the red rock and I have little piles scattered about and ready for deployment.

*Lyrical inspiration.

In 1989 a physicist at IBM named Donald Eigler and his colleague Erhard Schweizer used a scanning tunneling electron microscope in a new way. Instead of (merely!) looking at individual atoms, they modified the instrument so that they could move individual atoms. This was the result:

They used xenon atoms.

I don’t really know why, but I would guess it’s because xenon is non-reactive and the heaviest of the so-called “noble” gases. The elements on the far right of the periodic table (helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon) are mostly inert. They don’t do much reacting with other elements. Radon is radioactive and one of the rarest elements, so even though its atomic mass is 222, it can’t be worked with. Xenon is the next-heaviest (131).

Xenon occurs naturally in the atmosphere in very small amounts. But it’s a big atmosphere so there is actually a lot of the stuff!

These days it is used as a general anesthetic. Related to that, xenon is used in breathing mixtures for deep-sea divers.

APOD is my favorite website. APOD is Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Today the site turns 30. That’s old in internet-years. APOD is a product of NASA and its collaborations with places like Michigan Tech and the University of Maryland.

These sorts of government/university partnerships are the backbone of fundamental science in the United States. The nation advances when we learn more about our world. Humanity benefits from knowledge. Scholarship and research are essential to civilization.

Today at APOD they created an image of another image. They took 1836 individual images from five years of contributions to the site (it is updated daily). They made a digital mosaic of them, a total of 23,232 tiles. And they used them to make a starry night:

Cool, huh? Click on the image to make it larger.

I like APOD because I get a daily dose of awe. You should check it out, especially the archive. There’s something for everyone, from deep space to spacey scenery.

Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night is in New York City at the Museum of Modern Art.

Yesterday we talked about real stuff. Today, we talk about fakes.

Our Silicon Valley Tech Bro Overlords have finally lost the thread. They’ve saturated the market with tools, toys, gizmos, and gadgets, all promising us a better life. That didn’t work, so they penetrated every aspect of our lives with increasingly glitchy software that demands our continuous attention.

They won. They took over the world.

But it wasn’t enough. They want more.

Case in point—Sam Altman.

This sleazy con artist has a “new” idea. His company is going to make a new product. We don’t know what it is. (Neither does he.) We don’t know what it will do. We really don’t know anything about it at all, except Sam tells us he’ll sell “100 million units” by next year, and that it will be the next “core” item on your desk, right next to your MacBook and your iPhone.

The company is OpenAI. The product is some kind of AI-thingie. You’ve probably heard of ChatGPT, which is OpenAI’s flagship product. This product is enormously expensive. The company loses money every single time someone uses it.

But that’s not important. One thing these guys don’t ever have to worry about is money. They have lots. And rich people give them more all the time. How do you think Uber stays in business?

So Sam has a new idea and it’s a “device” that will be AI-driven and will be part of your life and there will be 100 million of them in the world by next year. This is according to the you-can’t bullshit-us Wall Street Journal:

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman gave his staff a preview Wednesday of the devices he is developing to build with the former Apple designer Jony Ive, laying out plans to ship 100 million AI “companions” that he hopes will become a part of everyday life.

So even the staid, straight-laced WSJ loves tech hype and bullshit.

Look: OpenAI isn’t going to deliver 100 million of anything! This is ALL GARBAGE. There is no new killer device. There is no new killer app. At best, we will get incremental improvements in our existing tech. Like, they will get better batteries.

And OpenAI is certainly not going to deliver a product that has not yet been created.

This is just more of the bullshit universe these clowns inhabit. All Sam Altman is doing is taking a page from the Elon Must playbook. When your company is losing money and can’t find a way to make a proper product that people want to buy, then hype up a bunch of fancy new ideas and tell your shareholders that these things are “just around the corner.” The credulous fools who own your stock will buy more and tell their friends to buy more and the result will be that the stock price will go up and everyone will get richer.

Meanwhile the company still sucks. And the products don’t sell. Yet Altman claims his new product will add ONE TRILLION DOLLARS in value to the company. Man, I wish I knew that math!

The so-called AI industry has failed to create anything. There is no consumer AI product that’s anywhere close to mass adoption. We used to call this “faking it” but now we call it entrepreneurship.

Don’t give billionaires the benefit of the doubt. When they spew their stupid bullshit, call them on it. Every time Sam Altman or the other Tech Bros open their mouths to tell us their “vision” just say “fake news” over and over again.

Then turn off your computer and go outside.

I’m exhausted by the endless tech hype that tries to sell us “the next big thing.” I’m old enough to have lived through multiple tech-hype cycles: PCs, the internet, streaming, iPhones, etc., ad nauseum. Now it’s AI. We’ll get to that later.

Today I want to talk about something REAL. This is technology that is actually useful and is actually working. At the Yimin coal facility in Mongolia the new truck fleet is electric and autonomous:

This checks all the cool, tech-y boxes: 5G, cloud computing, EVs, and AI.

Coal mining is not very exciting. But it is pretty damn important, especially in emerging economies. Getting robots to do some of the dirty work is a hell of an accomplishment. This is the kind of thing that we need technology for—solving real problems in the real world.

Tomorrow we will look at fake stuff.

We’ve a nocturnal visitor. He/she/it leaves deposits behind:

Here’s another take:

We’ve seen opossums before in our back yard. Our neighbor across the street reports an abundance of raccoons in the vicinity. We smell skunk regularly.

I tend to think it’s a striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis).

But I really don’t know so I’m throwing it out there! What’s crapping in my yard?