Quartz, cobalt, and the waste we leave behind

MIT Technology Review

Center

High Factuality

Quartz, cobalt, and the waste we leave behind

Some time before the first dinosaurs, two supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana, collided, forcing molten rock out from the depths of the Earth. As eons passed, the liquid rock cooled and geological forces carved this rocky fault line into Pico Sacro, a strange conical peak that sits like a wizard’s hat near the northwestern corner of Spain. Today, Pico Sacro is venerated as a holy site and rumored, in the local mythology, to be a portal to hel…