Most coveted of all are the pallasites, resplendent with extraterrestrial gemstones fixed in a nickel-iron matrix.
Both research groups use wire made of a standard alloy of nickel and iron that is easy to magnetise.
But the dozens of fragments that have been found so far point to a fairly common, stony asteroid with traces of nickel and iron.
Choice slices, cut thin enough to let light pass through, and polished to show the crisscrossed patterning of unalloyed nickel and iron, are as sublimely gaudy as Faberg??, and can be nearly as pricey.
His publicly-traded company, African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) has interests in platinum, nickel, chrome, iron, manganese, coal, copper and gold.
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Two of the most persistent, though, are that clay was the catalyst, and that iron and nickel sulphides were the catalysts.
Meanwhile, the profits of publicly traded companies in base metals such as copper, aluminum iron and nickel are up 6%, on average.
Not so long ago most products were produced using a handful of atoms from the periodic table, like copper, iron, nickel, and aluminum.
Patrice Motsepe is the Chairman of African Rainbow Minerals (ARM), a publicly-traded mining conglomerate which has interests in platinum, nickel, chrome, iron, manganese, coal, copper and gold.
The application WL- LSMS provides a nanoscale analysis of important materials such as steels, iron-nickel alloys and advanced permanent magnets that will help drive future electric motors and generators.
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For instance, while the vast majority of meteorites are stone, almost all sculpturals are made of an iron-nickel alloy, which takes on beautifully complex shapes as it falls to Earth through a process called ablation.
That was the year the government was formulating a draft mining charter, proposing that companies be at least 26% black-owned in order to get a government mining license. (The draft became law in 2005.) Since then Motsepe has diversified, swallowing up or forming partnerships with several other old mining companies and adding a swath of minerals: precious metals (platinum and its cousins), nickel, chrome, iron, manganese and coal.
Vale is the second-largest mining company in the world that produces a wide range of metals, the largest being iron ore and nickel.
Brazil's Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (nyse: RIO - news - people ), which mines iron ore, nickel and copper, among other things, has risen seventeenfold since 2003.
The Arctic is already a big source of minerals, including zinc in Alaska, gold in Canada, iron in Sweden and nickel in Russia, and there is plenty more to mine.
Citigroup estimates that the spot price is below the production costs for 15% of copper producers, 25% of aluminium producers, 50% of zinc producers, 30% of nickel producers and 10% of iron-ore producers.
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Together, the argument goes, the two companies could better direct scarce resources to extract iron, copper, nickel and so on where the most value is to be gained, and do so faster than they could individually.
Class M asteroids are composed of iron with large amounts of nickel, cobalt, and platinum group metals.
His assets span the iron-ore, coal and nickel industries, all of which have come under pressure from falling prices.
Commodities currently mined in the region include nickel, cobalt, platinum group metals, zinc, iron ore, and ilmenite, as well as gold.
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Over millions of years this created an oxygen-rich atmosphere that rapidly removed electrons from minerals near the surface, creating rust out of iron and forming thousands of new minerals from other metals like nickel, copper and uranium.
While it is also a major producer of nickel, copper and fertilizers, about 90% of its profits come from iron ore.
No wonder that Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, a big Brazilian iron-ore producer, is buying Inco, one of the two Canadian nickel firms gobbled up in recent deals.
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