In a sandfall, dry sand either falls vertically over suitable drops or cascades down hard slopes, creating stunning visual effects. The process has been described as “dry sandflows cascading down the escarpment face, where the grain concentration decreases dramatically and the streaming component of stress greatly exceeds the collisional component”

Sometimes water enters the mix and makes sand rivers possible too. When it rains in the desert and the water isn’t absorbed quickly, liquid can mix with the top layer of sand … and this wet sand can form moving rivers and waterfalls that you have to see to believe.

Sand generally can’t flow on its own like water as it quickly reaches a stable point where all the sides are at the angle of repose. If you have a very steep bank or sand dune then sand can flow down the side (which can actually be pretty dangerous if you are under it) but it self-limits and stops relatively quickly.

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Taking geothermal energy generation quite literally to the next level, Iceland is drilling a hole to tap into the Earth’s magma, a virtually unlimited potential power source.

The Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) is drilling 5 kilometers down into the Earth’s crust using its rig named “Thor” in order to reach hot zones between tectonic plates.

Unlike conventional geothermal, their pursuits are taking them to places where 400 to 1000 degrees Celsius can be expected, far hotter than similar approaches.

“People have drilled into hard rock at this depth, but never before into a fluid system like this,” Albert Albertsson of an Icelandic geothermal-energy company involved in the project. Researchers are hoping to find “supercritical steam,” which holds more heat energy than either liquid or gas. A potential 50 megawatts of energy could be generated from this steam, powering up to 50,000 homes. Similar techniques could be employed around the world near young volcanoes and similar subduction zones.

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After much speculation, research and confirmation, it is official: NASA scientists have announced that the Earth has a second moon, known as Asteroid 2016 H03, that has been orbiting the planet for around a century.

The wee asteroid is just a few hundred feet across and was detected earlier this year from a survey telescope in Hawaii. It follows an orbital pattern taking it on slow long loops. No one is quite sure how long the body will stay in our vicinity, but gravitational forces seem intent on keeping it around, at least for a while.

Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explains that because of its distance, this object is “quasi-satellite” of Earth. “Its loops drift a little ahead or behind from year to year, but when they drift too far forward or backward, Earth’s gravity is just strong enough to reverse the drift and hold onto the asteroid so that it never wanders farther away than about 100 times the distance of the moon. The same effect also prevents the asteroid from approaching much closer than about 38 times the distance of the moon. In effect, this small asteroid is caught in a little dance with Earth.”

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A recent sinkhole that suddenly appeared in the backyard of a home in Cornwall is a worrying indicator of hidden risks below seemingly ordinary streets and yards. This particular shaft, which drops 300 feet to the water (and possibly hundreds more below the waterline) looks man-made for a reason: it is really a remnant of the regional tin mining industry, simply covered, boarded up and built over when they were finished with it.

But this is just the tip of a mostly-hidden iceberg, per Subterranea: “As mines close, companies put very large blocks of timber, often old railway sleepers, across shafts and backfilled them, thinking this would be safe. Gradually all evidence of the engine houses and covered shafts disappeared from view and memory and in the past builders assumed there was nothing there. Had they consulted old maps they would have known about the shaft. The timbers rotted over the years and collapses like this often happen after long periods of rain, which they have had in this area.”

Sand, salt and chalk mines across Britain and around the world pose underground risks to everyday city dwellers, who assume their homes are built on solid foundations. Poor record keeping and time conspire to make these threats all the more impossible to anticipate without using ground-penetrating radar and other technologies in advance. Often, things remain stable for years, decades or even centuries, then give way during severe rains or floods. When buying a home in an area with a history of mining, be sure to check it out as best you can in advance.

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Eugene Chen, a chemist at the Colorado State University, has developed a fully reusable bioplastic – a unique new biopolymer that can be fully recycled back to its original monomer state for reuse through a heat-based reaction using GBL (Gamma-butyrolactone).

Previously, biopolymers could only be partially converted back to usable forms, contributing to the tens of millions of pounds of waste plastic that makes its way into the world’s oceans annually (over 5 trillion fragments).

Chen and partners were able to create linear and cyclic versions of the polymer by varying the catalysts used and the reaction conditions of the production process, upturning existing consensus opinions that purely (and complete) thermal recycling would be impossible.

These properties of the poly(GBL) underscore its immense industry-changing potential. It is importantly petroleum-free, can be broken down by living organisms (biodegradable) and can be fully recycled for future use. The discovery was published in Nature Chemistry journal and a provisional patent  recently received the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award.

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