{"id":11581,"date":"2021-08-09T17:28:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T00:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=11581"},"modified":"2021-08-15T17:32:22","modified_gmt":"2021-08-16T00:32:22","slug":"lithium-landscapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2021\/08\/09\/lithium-landscapes\/","title":{"rendered":"Lithium Landscapes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20210809-how-your-phone-battery-creates-striking-landscapes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">from BBC<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How your phone battery creates striking alien landscapes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a>By Richard Fisher and Javier Hirschfeld<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ychef.files.bbci.co.uk\/976x549\/p09rrzl5.jpg\" alt=\"A wider view of Chile's brine pools. It can take more than a year to maximise the lithium concentration by this evaporation method (Credit: Ivan Alvarado\/Reuters)\" style=\"width: 480px;\"><br><em>A wider view of Chile&#8217;s brine pools. It can take more than a year to maximise the lithium concentration by this evaporation method (Credit: Ivan Alvarado\/Reuters)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Beneath the screen that you are reading this on, there could be the distilled essence of a salt plain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Millions of years ago, volcanoes deposited minerals over vast tracts of South America. Later, water leached through the rock to form massive lakes. Cycles of evaporation and deposition followed, leaving vast plains of salt behind \u2013 infused with one of the world&#8217;s most sought-after minerals: lithium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the rapid rise in battery usage in electronic devices and electric cars, the demand for lithium and other constituent materials is accelerating. As BBC Future has previously reported, it is enabling mining companies to look in new places, such as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20201202-deep-sea-mining-tracks-on-the-ocean-floor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the deep ocean<\/a>\u00a0or in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20201124-how-geothermal-lithium-could-revolutionise-green-energy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">previously exploited mines<\/a>, and has prompted scientists to seek\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20200724-the-battery-made-from-diamonds-that-could-last-1000-years\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">alternative battery technology<\/a>.\u00a0But our focus today is how lithium is changing the fortunes \u2013 and specifically, the landscapes \u2013\u00a0of those countries that have it in abundance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Bolivia and Chile, the high tonnage of lithium embedded in the salt plains has given rise to massive facilities. From the air, the evaporation pools associated with the mineral&#8217;s extraction dot the landscape like colours in a painter&#8217;s palette. In this edition of our photography series Anthropo-Scene, we explore these places, whose striking features have inspired various\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mediafieldsjournal.org\/lithium-landscapes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">artists<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/institutions.newscientist.com\/article\/2051639-follow-the-lithium-dreams-expedition-to-chile-and-bolivia\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">writers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.unknownfieldsdivision.com\/summer2015bolivia+atacama-lithiumdreams.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">architects<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20210809-how-your-phone-battery-creates-striking-landscapes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">click to continue reading at BBC<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from BBC How your phone battery creates striking alien landscapes By Richard Fisher and Javier Hirschfeld A wider view of Chile&#8217;s brine pools. It can take more than a year to maximise the lithium concentration by this evaporation method (Credit: Ivan Alvarado\/Reuters) Beneath the screen that you are reading this on, there could be the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}