Mining companies are using cosmic rays to find critical minerals

Mengli Zhang, research assistant professor and director of the Center for Geophysics, Energy and Minerals, said more than cost and high resolution, the key is smaller and faster sensors that can get enough information before a borehole collapses.
April 14, 2026

The Pentagon is backing nuclear waste recycling for long-lasting military power sources

Jenifer Shafer, Ben L. Fryrear Presidential Chair and professor of chemistry, explains that because the U.S. previously urged allies to not recycle radioactive waste, it makes it difficult to change course and encourage recycling.
March 17, 2026

Why does Venezuela have so much oil? Geology

Luis Zerpa, Harry D. Campbell Endowed Chair in Petroleum Engineering, associate department head, associate professor, and director of The Center for Rock and Fluid Multiphysics, explains why Venezuela has the perfect geology for oil.
January 7, 2026

Meet the microbes that munch mountains of mining waste

Elizabeth Holley, associate professor of mining engineering, is quoted about her study published in Science that demonstrated much of the United States' critical minerals demand could be satisfied through reprocessing mine waste.
October 1, 2025

Antarctic Octopus Holds Secrets of Prehistoric Ice Loss in Its Genome

“This is really the first biologic evidence that’s being used for past collapse, and I think that that is the really special and surprising thing about this paper,” says Ryan Venturelli, a paleoglaciologist at the Colorado School of Mines, who was ....
December 21, 2023

Ice-Covered Volcanoes Offer Secret Eruption Warning

This amplifying effect also arises in a very different locale, says Ebru Bozdag, a geophysicist at the Colorado School of Mines, who was not involved in the study.
August 17, 2022

Air-Conditioning Should Be a Human Right in the Climate Crisis

Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute for Public Policy, was a co-author of this opinion piece about the importance of protecting vulnerable people from killer heat without destroying the environment.
May 10, 2022

Forever Chemicals Are Widespread in U.S. Drinking Water

These chemicals can linger on geologic time scales, explains Chris Higgins, a civil and environmental engineer at the Colorado School of Mines.
January 22, 2021

Water Found in Sunlight and Shadow on the Moon

Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Colorado School of Mines’ Center for Space Resources in Golden, Colo., also flags direct measurements as the most important next step to follow from the new findings.
October 26, 2020

NASA’s Hunt for Lunar Water Intensifies

So far all the signals and measurements gathered from remote-sensing probes constitute only a preliminary indication of the existence of water on the moon, says Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of ....
June 24, 2020