The most promising ways to destroy ‘forever chemicals’

Christopher Higgins, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Colorado School of Mines, discusses emerging technologies aimed at breaking down PFAS, or "forever chemicals," highlighting the global research efforts to effectively eliminate ....
May 13, 2025

Land under the country’s largest cities is sinking. Here’s where — and why.

Pejman Tahmasebi, associate professor of petroleum engineering, discusses how detailed mapping of land subsidence can inform groundwater management and urban planning to mitigate infrastructure risks.
May 8, 2025

What are Ukraine's critical minerals actually worth? No one knows.

Rod Eggert, deputy director of the Critical Materials Innovation Hub at Mines, is quoted in this article examining Ukraine's critical minerals. “Ukraine has significant mineral potential, but how large that potential is, we simply don’t know,” said Eggert,
February 28, 2025

La Niña is coming. Here’s how it could change the weather.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how this La Niña intersects with the generally very warm global oceans,” said Nathan Lenssen, a climate scientist at the Colorado School of Mines and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “We’re in really ....
July 11, 2024

Unleash the deep sea robots? A quandary as EV makers hunt for metals

“It is so uncertain where things are going,” said Ian Lange, director of the mineral and energy economics program at Colorado School of Mines. “There are a lot of changes that can still happen. It is hard to call anything in a battery right now ....
April 5, 2023

Panic over spy balloon echoes misguided alarm over Sputnik

Kenneth Osgood, professor of history at Colorado School of Mines, writes about the recent Chinese spy balloon and how the reaction to it is similar to the 1957 launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik.
February 13, 2023

Carmakers say the climate bill sets impossible targets

Those urging lawmakers to stand firm on the supply chain targets in the bill say automakers are overplaying their potential to slow down the transition into zero-emission cars and SUVs. Among them is Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute ....
August 3, 2022

A new gold rush pits money and jobs against California’s environment

“Gold is used as a hedge against economic insecurity, and we’ve certainly seen a lot of that in recent years,” said Elizabeth Holley, an associate professor in the Colorado School of Mines’ department of mining engineering.
July 18, 2022

In coal country, a new chance to clean up a toxic legacy

“The potential to recover rare earths from acid mine drainage and other streams in the coal production and combustion process represent an example of a broader set of potentially unconventional but transformative sources for securing access to rare ....
May 19, 2022

Russia and China have a history of bogus claims about U.S. biological warfare

Claims designed to weaken international resolve to sanction Russia for invading Ukraine are classic communist propaganda, writes Colorado School of Mines history professor Ken Osgood in this opinion piece.
March 29, 2022