Science, Time, and Spirit

Green Steel: Industry to Decarbonize as Regulatory Pressure Mounts BLUF: The global steel industry, responsible for 7-9% of direct CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion, is pursuing multiple pathways to "green steel" production including hydrogen-based direct reduction, electrification of blast furnaces, carbon capture technologies, and increased scrap recycling. While several pilot projects have achieved commercial milestones in 2024-2025, the transition faces significant challenges including hydrogen availability, energy infrastructure requirements, capital costs exceeding $10 billion for integrated plant conversions, and limited premium pricing acceptance in commodity markets. The Carbon Challenge Steel production released approximately 3.7 billion metric tons of CO2 globally in 2023, making it one of the most carbon-intensive industrial processes. Traditional blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) steelmaking, which produces roughly 70% of global crude steel,...

Concrete Industry to Slash Carbon Emissions TL;DR: The concrete industry, responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions, is pursuing multiple decarbonization strategies—from carbon capture to novel chemistries—while recent discoveries about self-healing Roman concrete offer additional insights. Despite promising innovations from startups and established producers, scaling low-carbon alternatives faces significant hurdles around cost, building codes, and the fundamental economics of a commodity business operating on thin margins. The world pours approximately 30 billion tons of concrete annually, making it humanity's most-consumed material after water. This ubiquitous building material also carries an enormous environmental burden: cement production alone generates roughly 2.9 billion tons of CO2 each year—approximately 8% of global emissions, rivaling the output of major industrial nations. "Concrete is literally the foundation of modern civilization, but it's also one o...

Pennies of Chemistry Command Hundreds in Price TL;DR: Carbon content—ranging from 0.05% to 2%—determines whether steel bends into car bodies or cuts through metal. Suppliers from China's Baowu to America's Nucor compete across this spectrum, with prices spanning $500 to $2,500 per tonne as tighter chemistry control and specialized applications drive premiums in a market shaped by trade barriers, raw material costs, and technological precision. The difference between steel that shapes skyscrapers and steel that machines their components comes down to less than one percent—specifically, how much carbon sits within the iron lattice. Carbon steel, the workhorse alloy underlying modern infrastructure and manufacturing, divides into distinct performance tiers based on a single variable: carbon content measured in fractions of a percentage point. Yet those fractions translate into dramatic differences in both material properties and market value, creating a global industry where ...

 The discovery of nuclear atomic structure came from Ernest Rutherford's gold foil experiment (1909-1911), conducted with Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden at the University of Manchester. The Experiment Rutherford's team fired alpha particles (helium nuclei) at an extremely thin gold foil—only about 400 atoms thick. They expected the particles to pass through with minimal deflection, based on J.J. Thomson's prevailing "plum pudding model" which envisioned atoms as diffuse positive charge with electrons embedded throughout. Instead, they observed: Most alpha particles passed straight through (as expected) Some deflected at small angles Astonishingly, about 1 in 8,000 bounced back at angles greater than 90° Rutherford famously remarked this was "as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you." This led him to propose that atoms have a tiny, dense, positively-charged nucleus containing most of the atom's mass...