Day: June 28, 2021

Confirming once more that it cannot be trusted, the metal known as fool’s gold, aka pyrite, can contain bits of the real thing, according to an Australian-Chinese research team. Getting at the trapped gold, however, is likely to be more trouble than it’s worth.

To the trained eye, the differences between the two minerals are somewhat obvious. Pyrite is magnetic; gold is not. Pyrite can manifest in bizarrely perfect geometries, while soft gold looks more like lustrous pebbles, smoothed by harder outside forces. Plenty of folks entranced by pyrite’s sparkle have bought and sold the stuff around the world. Pyrite even turned up during the California gold rush, deluding the fortune-seekers sifting through the state’s waterways.

This research team examined pyrite and found gold inclusions—exceptionally small ones that could only be seen using an atom probe, an instrument that can visualize the cross-sections of objects on an atomic scale. In other words, they’re invisible. The scientists used the atom probe to detect a new sort of way that gold hides inside fool’s gold. Their research was published in Geology last week.

“Previously gold extractors have been able to find gold in pyrite either as nanoparticles or as a pyrite-gold alloy, but what we have discovered is that gold can also be hosted in nanoscale crystal defects, representing a new kind of ‘invisible’ gold,” said Denis Fougerouse, a geologist at Curtin University in Australia and lead author of the new paper, in a university press release.

The block of pyrite the team inspected was collected from Jiangnan, China and formed where the Yangtze and Cathaysia tectonic plates collided about one billion years ago. Deep in the ground, and at the mercy of geologic processes, the pyrite developed imperfections that warped its crystalline structure. These defects, called dislocations, are extraordinarily small and trap the gold within the less precious mineral, which is composed of iron and sulfur.

In a Conversation article accompanying the paper’s release, Fougerouse wrote that it was previously suspected that bits of gold in pyrite crystals came about at different times, and the two minerals glommed together later on. The pyrite specimen the team inspected suggested that the two minerals can crystallize simultaneously, in a single process. Fougerouse also noted that different methods could be used to release the gold particles from their pyrite prison, which could be more energy efficient than the typical means of gold extraction, reactor-based oxidation, or smaller-scale methods like separating the gold from slag by smelting the ore.

We’ve yet to dislodge all of pyrite’s secrets. Some of them, it seems, were tucked away on the atomic level. But here’s hoping we won’t be fooled again.

More: Fool’s Gold Suggests Ancient Life in ‘Oxygen Oases’ Far Before There Was Atmospheric Oxygen

Lenovo has revealed a number of tablets at Mobile World Congress, including a widely expected 13-inch Yoga Tab. The device has a built-in, stainless steel kickstand, which will make it easy to position for hands-free use. Alternatively, you can use the stand as a hanger. Just make sure it’s resting on a sturdy hook.

According to Lenovo, the Yoga Tab 13 can stream video for up to 12 hours on a single charge. It has a 2K Low Temperature PolySilicon display, with 400 nits of brightness, 100 percent sRGB color gamut, a 60Hz refresh rate and Dolby Vision HDR support. With an included micro-HDMI to USB cable, you can use Yoga Tab 13 as a portable secondary display for a laptop or PC.

There’s a front-facing 8MP camera with face unlock support. The Yoga Tab 13 has four JBL speakers, two of which are built into the soundbar cylinder. The tablet has Dolby Atmos support and, thanks to a bottom audio chamber, up to 450Hz bass performance. A USB-C to 3.5mm headphone jack adaptor is included as well.

The tablet is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 Mobile Platform and has 8GB of LPDDR5 memory, WiFi 6 support and a USB-C charging port. Dual mics can pick up your Google Assistant commands, and there’s support for the Lenovo Precision Pen 2.2. The device weighs 1.83 lbs (830g). The Yoga Tab 13 (known as Yoga Pad Pro in China) starts at $680 and should go on sale in July.

Additionally, Lenovo announced the new Yoga Tab 11. It too has a kickstand that doubles as a hanger, along with an 11-inch 2K IPS Touch Display Driver Integration (TDDI) display and Dolby Vision and Atmos support. The 1.44 lbs (655g) tablet runs on a MediaTek Helio G90T octa-core processor and has a UFS-based memory chip with up to 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 256GB of storage.

The Yoga Tab 11 has four speakers and dual mics, a video playback time of up to 15 hours, USB-C fast charging support and a face unlock function. There’s a front-facing 8MP camera and another on the rear. You can pick up an LTE variant of the tablet as well. The Yoga Tab 11 starts at $320 and it should arrive in August.

Lenovo

Also new is the Lenovo Tab P11 Plus, which boasts an 11-inch (2000 x 1200) display, four speakers with Dolby Atmos support, an octa-core MediaTek G90T chipset and up to 6GB of memory. It weighs 1.1 lbs (490g) and has a microSD slot for expandable storage. There’s LTE support, a USB-C port and 8MP front-facing and 13MP rear cameras. Lenovo says you’ll get up to 12 hours of video playback on a single charge. The Tab P11 Plus starts at $260 and you should be able to get your hands on it in August.

Elsewhere, Lenovo has refreshed the Tab M7 and Tab M8. They both have a built-in kids mode with Google Kids Space and TDDI displays. The processors have been upgraded and, on the Tab M8, you’ll get up to 15 hours of video playback, according to Lenovo. The Tab M7 should arrive in July, starting at $110. The third-gen Tab M8 will hit select markets later this year, but it won’t be coming to the US.

Lenovo’s latest tablets all support Google’s Entertainment Space feature. That brings together content from all of your media apps into a single hub, including games, books and things to watch.

Armies want autonomous vehicles to reduce the risk and workload for soldiers, and a new model is a prime example of how that will work, as Popular Science has reported. The excellently named Rheinmetall Mission Master XT can carry 2,204 pounds of supplies into battle, while operating over a range of over 460 miles. That would allow it to follow soldiers over rough terrain, transport a soldier or act as a scout. 

The Mission Master XT, designed and built by Rheinmetall Canada, can handle sandy, rocky and mountainous terrain, even in “ice, snow and zub-zero weather conditions,” the company said. It’s also fully amphibious so it can float and swim across water with its full ton-plus payload or mount hills as steep as 35 degrees. At the same time, the massive, low-inflation tires can function even with holes as deep as three-quarters of an inch in depth. 

The vehicle uses a diesel-powered engine to achieve its 460 mile range, but also packs lithium-ion batteries that can power electronics for up to six hours. That allows users to do “silent watch” operations like surveilling the enemy from up close without making any noise or emitting a thermal pattern that can be detected by the enemy. 

It can drive autonomously thanks to Rheinmetall’s custom PATH software and hardware that includes 3D Lidar, front and rear cameras and extra sensors to navigate where GPS might be unavailable. It also has a follow mode where it can track a soldier or vehicle ahead while maintaining a safe distance. At the same time, it has a place for a driver who can operate the vehicle with an integrated joystick. 

With those capabilities, the Mission Master XT is designed to haul supplies, ferry humans and carry wounded out of battle zones. However, it could potentially take a more active role, as well. It’s also designed to carry a gun with “much more firepower than the usual man-carried section weapon,” so it could potentially fight in “wolf packs” with two scouting vehicles and four armed robots. In that case, it would be operated remotely and not autonomously, presumably to avoid any ED-209 scenarios.