Picojoule

  The periodic table of the elements, devised by Mendeleev in 1870, is one of the most dangerous things ever created. It seemingly awakens us to a world of chemical possibilities, but it misleads us into believing that the world actually provides us with these things as starting materials. The most obvious problem, of course, is that is gives equal visual weight to atoms with vastly different relative abundances. Thus, we could try scaling by that. But that seems hard to get right as well.   But my current beef is that, except for a few inert and/or shiny things, nothing is available in elemental form. Which leads into an analysis of this fake news:   Scientists find way to make mineral which can remove CO2 from atmosphere     ******snip***   Scientists have found a rapid way of producing magnesite, a mineral which stores carbon dioxide. If this can be developed to an industrial scale, it opens the door to removing CO 2 from the...