earth

Molycorp, a U.S.-based supplier of rare earth minerals, said today it has acquired a processing facility to manufacture metals for use as magnets from its minerals used in many green-technology products.

The company paid $17.5 million to Japan-based Santoku for its Arizona-based Santoku America, which has a facility that can make neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) alloys from the minerals mined at Molycorp's Mountain Pass, Calif., facility. Molycorp on Wednesday plans to host a ground-breaking event at the mine, which has been closed since the 1990s.

The acquisition gives Molycorp the ability to make some products for … Read more

If you own a Blu-ray player and a set of eyeballs, you absolutely, positively must add "Planet Earth" to your library. I insist.

This four-disc BBC documentary series has a list price of $99.99, but Best Buy has "Planet Earth" on Blu-ray for $24.99, plus sales tax in most states and $2.49 for shipping. (You can save on shipping by heading to your local Best Buy brick-and-mortar, though I'm not positive the price is the same in-store.)

Another option: Amazon also has it for $24.99, with no sales tax, but you'… Read more

File this one away under the rubric of "thinking big."

A half century after scientists failed on their first attempt to penetrate the Earth's mantle, geologists Damon Teagle of the National Oceanography Center in Southampton, England, and Benoit Ildefonse from Montpellier University in France say it's time for a second try. And unlike their predecessors, they have the technology to turn that challenging endeavor into a reality.

The goal is to retrieve samples from the Earth's mantle, a feat which, if successful, would supply a trove of new information about our planet's origins and … Read more

Expanding its efforts to help restore contact among people separated by the Japanese disasters, Google said today it's creating computerized versions of lists of people at emergency shelters.

"To help the many people in shelters get word of their whereabouts to loved ones, we're...asking people in shelters to take photos of the handwritten lists of names of current residents and e-mail them to us," Google said in a blog post. Google scans the data to add to its Japan person-finder site, "but it's a big job that can't be done automatically by … Read more

Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Japan was big enough to shorten the length of Earth's day by 1.8 millionths of a second, a NASA scientist has calculated.

Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory projected the change based on calculations of how the distribution of Earth's mass changed. Moving mass toward the north or south poles, and thus closer to Earth's axis of rotation, can make the planet spin faster in much the same way an ice skater can spin faster by bringing arms and legs closer toward the body.

Gross also calculated … Read more

A carbon footprint measures the amount of greenhouse gases that we put out into the atmosphere via transportation, electricity use, and other daily activities. Carbon Footprint Calculator is a Google Desktop Gadget that lets users easily tabulate their carbon footprints, as well as the number of trees that would need to be planted in order to offset it.

The program appears as an attractive rectangle within Google Desktop. The gadget's text invites users to calculate their carbon footprint by clicking on the word Start, and it then walks users through a series of questions about their energy consumption. Users … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Some of Google's next big opportunities may not come out of its traditional product development organization; look out for the do-gooders.

It's been almost two years since Google announced a philosophy shift at Google.org to focus more on attacking "problems in ways that make the most of Google's strengths in technology and information," Larry Brilliant, the former head of Google.org, said at the time. One of the first successes from that shift--Google Earth Engine--may not only help developing countries get accurate data about their environments for the first time, but … Read more

Google is for the first time launching Chrome, Google Earth, and Picasa for users in Iran, according to the company's official blog.

The U.S. government recently lifted some of the restrictions prohibiting software downloads to Iran. Now, the search giant is looking to get its downloadable products into the hands of Iranian citizens while at the same time blocking access to the Iranian government.

"We're committed to full compliance with U.S. export controls and sanctions programs and, as a condition of our export licenses from the Treasury Department, we will continue to block IP addresses … Read more

Having tracked traditional weather data for years, Earth Networks is taking on greenhouse gases.

Formerly named AWS Convergence Technologies and operators of the Weather Bug Web application, Earth Networks said today it will invest $25 million over five years to equip about 100 locations worldwide with sensors to measure the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide and methane.

The company will collaborate with the Scripps Institute for Oceanography in La Jolla, California to gather and analyze the data and combine it with weather-related data. Earth Networks CEO Robert Marshall and Scripps director Dr. Tony Haymet are … Read more