For a modern-day climate scientist, this rock could be magical.
Humans release at least 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, which can be tough on the environment.
But what if, alchemy-like, we could take all that carbon dioxide and turn it into rock?
At Iceland's Hellisheidi power plant, that's what they've been trying to do.
Hellisheidi is a geothermal plant, which means it uses volcanically-heated water to run turbines, but the process isn't perfectly emission-free — it can bring up volcanic gases, including carbon dioxide.
And while the amount of those gases it generates are only a tiny fraction of what a coal plant would produce, the power plant still wanted to get rid of it.
So in 2012, they started a pilot program, Carbfix, to try putting that carbon back in the ground.
How do they do it?
They capture the plant's carbon dioxide, mix it with water, and inject it nearly a half-mile down into the volcanic basalt.
There, the carbon dioxide reacts with chemicals naturally found in the basalt and turns from a gas into chalky, white carbonate.
Some previous projects have tried pumping carbon dioxide into sandstone or aquifers, but that was essentially just hiding the carbon dioxide. This process transforms it.
That's great! But the truly amazing thing is that the process works hundreds of times faster than anyone predicted.
We knew this chemical reaction was theoretically possible, but previous studies guessed that it'd take hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years to work.
But Hellisheidi blew that timeline away. Within two years, 95% of the carbon dioxide pumped down had been turned into rock. The researchers just published these astounding findings in the journal Science.
This is amazing because it's not just Iceland that can do this. We could do this anywhere there's basalt.
Basalt is formed from volcanoes. Most of the sea floor is made of basalt and about 10% of continental rocks are too.
The Iceland scientists aren't being too hasty though. The next step is to try again at a larger scale.
The project is currently injecting 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. They're planning to double that rate this summer and see how it works.
They're also being careful about any unintended consequences.
Some of the cores contained a greenish slime, for instance, which may be biological. Microbiologists are going to study this slime to learn how the Carbfix process might affect underground microbes.
And all of this research is key if we're going to stop climate change.
Carbon capture is a needed bridge to help us while we transition to clean energy.
In 2014, the International Panel on Climate Change included carbon capture in their list of options to help us limit climate change.
There's still a lot we need to do to stop climate change, but this technique could be a huge step forward.
There are many things we can personally do — such as limiting energy use and using our cars less — but we need action at the systematic level too.
"We need to deal with rising carbon emissions," said Dr. Jeurg Matter, lead author of the paper, in an article from Columbia University.
"This is the ultimate permanent storage — turning them back to stone."
Men try to read the most disturbing comments women get online back to them.
If you wouldn't say it to their faces, don't type it.
This isn’t comfortable to talk about.
Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.
A recent video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.
Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.
*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they're just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)
It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:
Awful.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.
Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League's most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league's top players was accused of rape.
DiCaro wasn't writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn't receive nearly the same amount of abuse.
It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.
The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their jobs.
Not saying it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Think this is all just anecdotal? There's evidence to the contrary.
The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is.
They did a study of over 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006. They counted how many comments that violated their comment policy were blocked.
The stats were staggering.
From their comprehensive and disturbing article:
If you can’t say it to their face... don’t type it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
So what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?
There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it's not OK to talk to anyone like that.
Watch the whole video below:
.This article originally appeared on 04.27.16