The Coldest Machines on Earth Run on a Gas Made From Nuclear Warheads A working quantum computer has to sit colder than deep space. Its qubits hold information only when the temperature drops to about 10 to 20 thousandths of…
The Future Uses of Tin Inside every factory that makes the world’s most advanced computer chips stands a machine that fires 50,000 droplets of molten tin per second, then vaporizes each one with a laser to make light. No tin,…
The Future Uses of Copper Copper is trading at prices no one has ever paid before. In mid-July 2026 the London Metal Exchange cash price sits around $13,500 per tonne, after blowing through its December 2025 record of $11,771 and…
The Future Uses of Silver Industry now burns through more silver every year than every mine on Earth pulls out of the ground. The Silver Institute expects 2026 to close with a sixth straight annual deficit, and the gap is…
Fusion plants would burn 500 million gold targets a year. Satellites vaporize their gold on reentry. AI servers, central banks and a flat mine supply — how future tech is rewriting gold demand.
The Fern That Grows Its Own Rare-Earth Ore On a weathered hillside in southern China, a scrambling fork fern called Dicranopteris linearis pulls rare earth elements out of the ground and packs them into its fronds until they make up…
