If a news story comes along that could interfere with the profit of the owners of the NYT, what do you think their intent would be?
If a news story comes along that could interfere with the profit of the owners of the NYT, what do you think their intent would be?
Glass. Meh just heated sand.
Wish it was that simple, but glass & construction-grade silica sand are actually becoming somewhat scarce and facing shortages. The composition, purity, and grain size make some sand vastly more desirable than other sand. There’s already commercial operations grinding down quartz slabs, because thats easier than trying to sieve and process out all the non-quartz grains.
And sand-dredging operations arent any less damaging to the enviroment than other strip mining methods even where there are good deposits. Glass recycling is good.
Give it a few (hundred) million years. It’ll happen.
Newgang represent
In addition to what other posters have said, chemotrophic bacteria can play a significant role concentrating/enriching certain metallic ores by eating dissolved minerals in deep groundwater and metabolizing out metals. Lots of vein-gold runs through very old & fractured marble/granite bedrock with a lot of hydrologic activity.