Skip to main content
 A brand new type of rock has formed from our plastic waste
clastic-pellets-kamilo-beachsmall
Image: Patricia Corcoran
The new type of material will stay in the Earth’s rock record forever, according to a new study, and will one day act as a geological marker for humanity’s impact on the planet.
The research from the University of Western Ontario in Canada has revealed plastiglomerates form when melted plastic rubbish on beaches mixes with sediment, lava fragments and organic debris to produce a whole new type of rock.
So far the material has only been found at Hawaii’s Kamilo beach, which is considered one of the dirtiest in the world, but the unique geological material likely exists in many other locations, as Joseph Castro reports for LiveScience.
Research on the plastiglomerates from Kamilo Beach have found there are two types: In situ and clastic. The results are published in GSA Today.
The in situ variety is rarer, and forms when “plastic melts on rock and becomes incorporated into the rock outcrop,” lead author Patricia Corcoran told LiveScience. Clastic plastiglomerates (pictured above) instead form as loose rocky structures, when a combination of shells, coral, basalt, woody debris and sand are glued together by melted plastic.
Plastiglomerate was first discovered by oceanographer Captain Charles Moore, who thought that molten lava had melted the plastic to create the new rock material. But, as LiveScience reports, the researchers revealed that the lava hadn’t flowed since before plastics were first invented, suggesting our waste was definitely to blame.
It’s not great news, especially given the fact today is World Environment Day. Hey Earth, to celebrate, we’ve made you a new type of rock that will NEVER break down. You're welcome. But perhaps there will be some practical uses for the material in future?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Einstein’s Lost Theory Describes a Universe Without a Big Bang

Einstein with Edwin Hubble, in 1931, at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, looking through the lens of the 100-inch telescope through which Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe in 1929.  Courtesy of the Archives, Calif Inst of Technology. In 1917, a year after Albert Einstein’s  general theory of relativity  was published—but still two years before he would become the international celebrity we know—Einstein chose to tackle the  entire universe . For anyone else, this might seem an exceedingly ambitious task—but this was Einstein. Einstein began by applying his  field equations of gravitation  to what he considered to be the entire universe. The field equations were the mathematical essence of his general theory of relativity, which extended Newton’s theory of gravity  to realms where speeds approach that of light and masses are very large. But his math was better than he wanted to believe—...
Post a Comment
Read more

There’s a Previously Undiscovered Organ in Your Body, And It Could Explain How Cancer Spreads

Ever heard of the interstitium? No? That’s OK, you’re not alone  —  scientists hadn’t either. Until recently. And, hey, guess what  —  you’ve got one! The interstitium is your newest organ. Scientists identified it for the first time because they are better able to observe living tissues at a microscopic scale, according to a recent study published  in  Scientific Reports , Scientists had long believed that connective tissue surrounding our organs was a thick, compact layer. That’s what they saw when they looked at it in the lab, outside the body, at least. But in a routine endoscopy (exploration of the gastrointestinal tract), a micro camera revealed something unexpected: When observed in a living body, the connective tissue turned out to be “an open, fluid-filled space supported by a lattice made of thick collagen bundles,” pathologist and study author Neil Theise  told  Research Gate . This network of channels is present throughout ...
Post a Comment
Read more

First light-bending calculator designed with metamaterials

Exotic materials that bend light in extreme ways could be used to perform complex mathematical operations, creating a new kind of analogue computer. Tools for manipulating light waves have taken off in recent years thanks to the development of  metamaterials . These materials have complex internal structures on scales smaller than the wavelength of the light they interact with, and so they produce unusual effects. Most famously, metamaterials promise to deliver " invisibility cloaks " that can route light around an object, making it seem to disappear. Nader Engheta  at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and his colleagues decided to explore a different use for metamaterials, one that adapts the  old idea of analogue computing . Today's digital computers are based on electrical switches that are either on or off. But before these machines were analogue computers based on varying electrical or mechanical properties. The  slide rule  is one example...
Post a Comment
Read more