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 .'''p094 Chapter 5 Silver'''  .'''p094 Chapter 5 Silver'''Atmel AT697F-KG-E
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 .p251 [[ | The City of the Yellow Devil ]] by [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Gorky | Maxim Gorky ]]
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 .p275 [[ | ]]
 .p251 [[ https://archive.org/details/yellowdevilgorky | The City of the Yellow Devil ]] essay by [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Gorky | Maxim Gorky ]]
 .p252 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin | Lenin: ]] "When we are victorious on a world scale, we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories."
 .p253 Stalin instigated vast gold mining, not one gram was used for public lavatories. (world scale victory, not yet)
 .p254 3000BC [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakdrisi | Sakdrisi ]] oldest known gold mine in the world
 .p255 archaeological treasure destroyed by company licensed by Georgian government
 .p256 "Why do people love gold? It has no uses"
  .7% is used industrially, I've used it for integrated circuits and corrosion-resistant connector plating
 .p257 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece | Golden Fleece ]] [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchis | Colchis ]] miners used fleeces to trap gold particles in mountain streams
 .p258 Others interpret it as alchemical formula written on sheepskin
 .p262 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svan_language#/media/File:Kartvelian_languages.svg | Svan language ]]
 .p262 [[ https://georgiantravelguide.com/en/articles/svanuri-samzareulo | Lenjeri in Caucasus ]] [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(country) | Georgia ]]
 .p263 Courtship Caucasus style: kidnapping the bride
 .p264 Machine-mining for gold forbidden in [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svaneti | Svaneti ]]
 .p265 [[ https://www.explodingkittens.com/products/survivor-lets-go-to-the-rocks | exploding kittens card game ]]
 .p266 Gold mining one of the most destructive in the world, killing thousands per year and 180 million tonnes of waste
 .p267 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackenna's_Gold | McKenna's Gold ]] 1969 2h 8m 6.7 [[ https://www.imdb.com/title
 .p268 4th most popular film in Soviet history, most seen Hollywood film in India before Star Wars
 .p269 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesti | Mestia ]] highland townlet (daba) in northwest Georgia, in the Caucasus Mountains
 .p270 [[ https://www.about.ge/en/pois/?poid=7720 | lemshveniera ]] village in Georgia
 .p273 gold panning
 .p275 Enough gold in Earth's core to coat surface 45 cm thick ( 0.2 ppm )
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 .p278 Lithium palliates uric acid in gout
 .p278 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithia_Springs,_Georgia | Lithia Springs in Georgia ]]
 .p278 7Up was originally 7Up Lithiated Lemon Soda
 .p278 lithium under-prescribed [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_toxicity | Lithium toxicity ]] lithium level in blood serum of greater than 1.2 mEq/L
 .p278 [[ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2846853 | Lithium for Alzheimer Disease ]] JAMA 2026
 .p279 producing a tonne of lithium consumes 500 tonnes of water ''in desert regions''
 .p280 former Cornwall tin mines may be source of lithium brine
 .p280 [[ https://www.chrissingletonmusic.com/blog/tag/Beardy+Weirdies | Beardy Weirdies ]]
 .p281 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B&Q | B&Q ]] Block & Quayle, DIY and garden store in UK
 .p281 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_building#Alternative_names | Portakabin ]]
 .p282 circular economy; after lithium removed the water is pure
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 .p283 [[ https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/natural-regeneration | regen, natural regeneration ]]
 .p285 only 1% of soil organisms have been identified
 .p285 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killas | killas ]] Cornish mining term for metamorphic rock strata of sedimentary origin
 .p285 root hairs vast platform for osmosis of mineral salts; iron, magnesium, copper, potassium, cobalt and zinc
 .p285 hypothetical: what would have happened if we understoos soil's innate vitality and fragility
 .p286 Our actions becoming more remedial ... age of correction
 .p287 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake | William Blake's ]] [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marriage_of_Heaven_and_Hell | Heaven and Hell ]]
  . the flames of hell are not punitive, bur creative fire and imagination.
 .p288 Site of Special Scientific Interest . large-scale restoration . sponsored by a clothing brand . seagrass
   . [[ https://www.projectseagrass.org/ | Project Seagrass ]]

Under a Metal Sky

A Journey Through Minerals, Greed, And Wonder

  • Philip Marsden . 2024 . 549.09 MAR . Beaverton Library


Ammonite

1

1.

Ochre: An Introduction

5

2.

Tin

24

3.

Peat

41

4.

Bronze

67

5.

Silver

94

6.

Radium

127

7.

Aerolite

152

8.

Mercury

184

9.

Copper

213

10.

Gold

246

11.

Lithium: A Coda

277

Soil

283


  • p001 Introduction - Ammonite



.p024 Chapter 2 Tin

  • p025 Stanene zero resistance 2D tin surface (?)

  • p027 Beardies . bearded men?
  • p027 Wheal Jane is a disused tin mine near Baldhu and Chacewater in West Cornwall

  • p027 winze minor connection between mine levels

  • p027 drift, adit = horizontal tunnels
  • p027 stope open space after desired material removed

  • p027 Mexico Towans a sand dune

  • p028 Saint Ives Bakery

  • p030 James Forbes and Cornish tin mining - can't find 1794? 1983? citation
  • p032 casserite tin oxide mineral, SnO₂

  • p033 cow's tail line

  • p034 potholing, UK term for spelunking


  • p041 Chapter 3 Peat

  • p041 bog iron

  • p042 peat sorbent

  • p042 Bog butter

  • p043 anaerobic peat stops decay
  • p043 Lindow Man 2000 y.o. body from peat bog

  • p043 peatlands hold twice as much carbon as all the world's forests combined, release CO₂ when drained
  • p044 underground peat can burn for years. Forty billion tonnes of carbon in buried peat.
  • p048 Peat decay drops land level and damages farm soil on top
  • p057 Doggerland ~8000 BCE

  • p057 Storegga Slide huge submarine landslide west of Norway ~6200BCE, 20 meter tsunami

  • p057 By 2100, sea-level rise will approach early Holocene (about 60 meters)

    • <15m Miami, New Orleans, Boston, Seattle, Philadephia, Houston, New York

    • <30m Washington DC, San Francisco, Portland, San Jose

    • Los Angeles is 82m, Dallas 129m, Chicago 181m
  • p058 500K serfs built St. Petersburg Russia 1703 to 1712? 1762?, 30K to 100K died
  • p058 Federick the Great drained Oderbruch flood plain

  • p058 Mussolini (workers) drained the Pontine Marshes 80K hectares, 800km² coastal area southeast of Rome

  • p059 Saddam Hussein drained Marsh Arab marshes

  • p064 1953 Watersnoodramp storm surge floods killed thousands


  • p067 Chapter 4 Bronze

  • p067 Bronze 9 parts copper and one part tin at 1000℃

  • p068 Oxidized bronze turns green, but does not degrade like iron
  • p071 bronze hoards buried, speculations about "seeding" bronze creation
  • p074 Seestern barge on the Rhine, carrying 800 tonnes of building steel

  • p078 Nebra Sky Disk, Pleiades and Moon represent planting time (?)

  • p078 outer 82 degree bands signified solstice angles? no, that is ±23 degrees
  • p079 sun-ship?

  • p080 Bronze Age: the wheel, writing, legal codes, and civil administration
  • p080 domestic chicken Gallus gallus domesticus originated in China 8000 years ago

    • hens lay 500-600 eggs in a lifetime, some breeds 800, all time record 1444 eggs. Culled after 12 to 18 months as production declines
  • p081 normal marine convention is passing port (left) side to port side; upper Rhine upstream traffic passes on inner bend
  • p082 Onedin Line BBC TV 1971-80 about 1880-86 Liverpool shipping company

  • p082 Prewar Seestern was barge pushed by tugboats

  • p084 320 MW gas fired Hermann Wenzel Power Station near Duisberg

  • p084 50 billion tonnes of sand and gravel annual production, mostly for concrete
  • p092 803m Mittelberg mountain in Thuringia

  • p092 Mittelberg sky disk


  • p094 Chapter 5 SilverAtmel AT697F-KG-E

  • p094 Athen's golden age supported by Laurium silver mines on the Attica penninsula

  • p094 1545 discovery of Potosi silver 60,000 tonnes extracted, estimated 50,000 tonnes remaining

  • p104 Swedish inventor Christopher Polhem 1661-1751

  • p106 Kunstgraben water channels fed water wheels from sources kilometers away

  • p107 silver co-precipitates with lead; silver mining caused lead poisoning of miners and cattle
  • p108 native beach and oak forests cut, replaced with monoculture spruce, Große Wurmtrocknis infestation of bark beetles destroyed 30,000 hectares of forest in 1800
  • p110 mechanical models: Susan Stewart 1984 On Longing PSU 4th P302.S692

  • p111 trees "spillikined against the sides" verb?
  • p112 greywacke hard dark clay-fine sandstone

  • p112 hornfels hardened metamorphic rock

  • p113 Goethe 1749-1832 devoted to nature and geology, driven by connection, huge rock collection

  • p117 The Brocken 1141 meter mountain in the Harz mountain range (Larch Mountain is 1055 meters)

  • p124 Goethe neologism Veloziferische fast devilish modern life


  • p127 Chapter 6 Radium

  • p128 Marie Curie radium 3e6 more radioactive than uranium

  • p129 radium killed flour grubs instantly, except for one that lived three times longer
  • p130 Radithor manufactured 400,000 bottles between 1918 and 1930

  • p131 Eben Byers drank 1,400 bottles

  • p132 Marie Curie died of aplastic anemia age 66, her notebooks are dangerous to work with

  • p141 Jáchymov radon spa, uranium mines, Soviet prisoner miners, now mostly unoccupied.

  • p141 Cornwall St. Ives Wheal Trenwith mine full of pitchblende? South Terras mine

  • p149 Nazi occupation of Jáchymov did not lead to uranium bomb; scientists fled, or banished because they were Jews



  • p184 Chapter 8 Mercury

  • p189 Ljubljana Slovenia

  • p189 Idrija Slovenia

  • p193 Paracelsus

  • p194 "A doctor must seek out old wives, gypsies, sorcerers, wandering tribes, old robbers, and such outlaws and take lessons from them. We must seek for ourselves, travel through the countries, and experience much, and when we have experienced all sorts of things. we must hold fast that which is good."

  • p194 disbelieved chrysopoeia transmutation into gold

  • p195 recommended breathing filters for mercury miners (finally adopted four centuries later)
  • p200 hornbeam

  • p200 campanula

  • p200 henbane bell

  • p200 Giovanni Antonio Scopoli

  • p202 James Hutton 1788 erosion paper uniformitarianism

  • p202 scopalamine motion sickness, inhibition suppression for interrogation

  • p204 Mercury Silvering

  • p208 "brush-covered clamp"(?) ... damp??
  • p208 bal maiden female Cornish miners

  • p210 Thoth Egyptian god of writing and wisdom

  • p211 alkahest universal solvent, mentioned by Paracelsus



  • p246 Chapter 10 Gold

  • p248 Welcome Stranger Australia 1869, 72 kg, largest gold nugget ever discovered, sold for ₤9553, equivalent 2026 purchasing power ₤1.5M.

    • ₤1 invested at 5% in 1869 is ₤20K in 2026, so ₤9553 grows to $20M
    • Current gold price $148K/kg, $10.6M for 72 kg
    • the interest is probably taxed over time, and banks fail, so hoard the gold, especially if it has uniqueness valued
  • p248 Herodotus mythical "giant furry ants" , probably Himalayan marmots

  • p249 potable gold elixir postponing death indefinitely

  • p250 War of the Golden Stool 1900, British in West Africa

  • p251 300,000 Americans went to California for gold
  • p251 Newton created gold standard in 1717, stabilized UK and other currencies
  • p251 WW1, nations discovered they could print money without gold backing
  • p251 The City of the Yellow Devil essay by Maxim Gorky

  • p252 Lenin: "When we are victorious on a world scale, we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories."

  • p253 Stalin instigated vast gold mining, not one gram was used for public lavatories. (world scale victory, not yet)
  • p254 3000BC Sakdrisi oldest known gold mine in the world

  • p255 archaeological treasure destroyed by company licensed by Georgian government
  • p256 "Why do people love gold? It has no uses"
    • 7% is used industrially, I've used it for integrated circuits and corrosion-resistant connector plating
  • p257 Golden Fleece Colchis miners used fleeces to trap gold particles in mountain streams

  • p258 Others interpret it as alchemical formula written on sheepskin
  • p262 Svan language

  • p262 Lenjeri in Caucasus Georgia

  • p263 Courtship Caucasus style: kidnapping the bride
  • p264 Machine-mining for gold forbidden in Svaneti

  • p265 exploding kittens card game

  • p266 Gold mining one of the most destructive in the world, killing thousands per year and 180 million tonnes of waste
  • p267 McKenna's Gold 1969 2h 8m 6.7 [[ https://www.imdb.com/title

  • p268 4th most popular film in Soviet history, most seen Hollywood film in India before Star Wars
  • p269 Mestia highland townlet (daba) in northwest Georgia, in the Caucasus Mountains

  • p270 lemshveniera village in Georgia

  • p273 gold panning
  • p275 Enough gold in Earth's core to coat surface 45 cm thick ( 0.2 ppm )


  • p277 Chapter 11 Lithium: A Coda

  • p278 Lithium palliates uric acid in gout
  • p278 Lithia Springs in Georgia

  • p278 7Up was originally 7Up Lithiated Lemon Soda
  • p278 lithium under-prescribed Lithium toxicity lithium level in blood serum of greater than 1.2 mEq/L

  • p278 Lithium for Alzheimer Disease JAMA 2026

  • p279 producing a tonne of lithium consumes 500 tonnes of water in desert regions

  • p280 former Cornwall tin mines may be source of lithium brine
  • p280 Beardy Weirdies

  • p281 B&Q Block & Quayle, DIY and garden store in UK

  • p281 Portakabin

  • p282 circular economy; after lithium removed the water is pure


  • p283 Soil

  • p283 regen, natural regeneration

  • p285 only 1% of soil organisms have been identified
  • p285 killas Cornish mining term for metamorphic rock strata of sedimentary origin

  • p285 root hairs vast platform for osmosis of mineral salts; iron, magnesium, copper, potassium, cobalt and zinc
  • p285 hypothetical: what would have happened if we understoos soil's innate vitality and fragility
  • p286 Our actions becoming more remedial ... age of correction
  • p287 William Blake's Heaven and Hell

    • the flames of hell are not punitive, bur creative fire and imagination.
  • p288 Site of Special Scientific Interest . large-scale restoration . sponsored by a clothing brand . seagrass


MetalSky (last edited 2026-05-01 23:39:43 by KeithLofstrom)