The Connection Between Organized Crime and...Sand?
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- Sand is used everywhere: from glass to asphalt, sand is a key ingredient for all sorts of materials in construction and technology. But this heavy reliance on sand means that we’re also reaching a limit on this seemingly infinite resource-and it's also in demand by... criminals? Learn more with Hank in this new episode of SciShow!
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The World Is Built on Sand... and We're Running Out
Hank Green: We're running out of sand
Anakin Skywalker: *Finally*
😂😂😂
lol
It gets better. Read the description
I don't like prequel memes. They're coarse, rough and irritating and they get everywhere
Water wore sand, not desert sand that he hated. 😂
"In Italy, sand supplies are heavily influenced by organized crime." This was actually the least surprising thing I learned in this video.
Sandy the Godfather or what? XD
(//Homer Simpson voice//) ''Mmm! Organised crime!''
@@chrishargreaves8016 Don Homer
Well they do make a lot of concrete shoes for that authentic trip known as swimming with the fishes!
You don't want to be putting sand in Antonio pablanos tortellini
As a geologist who works with a sedimentary basin that is mostly made of sand, you also have a big problem: the disregard a lot of miners have for fossils. Thanks to the high demand for sand, a lot of illegal mines or even legal mines but with very little inspection from governments, a lot of historical data is being crushed away by heavy machinery. It's really sad to see and it's very common.
If any parties were willing to pay a high enough price for these fossils, the situation would change fast.
@@alterego3734 WHERE IS BLATHERS WHEN WE NEED HIM
This was actually surprising. One of those huge things you have no idea about in normal life.
And props to Germany for amazing recycling practices as always!
I have never seen a grown man so excited, angry and exasperated about sand and I'm a geologist
Not surprising. It's mostly a politics and economics problem. As a geologist, you probably know how much SO2 there is on the planet...
i don't think that's it.
@@ashoka9306 Oh, it absolutely is. At the moment it is highly profitable to acquire and sell sand. If that sand comes from out of a protected area, the government has to criminalize and stop it. If the government does NOT stop it, then said protected area will be raided until there is no sand left in it.
Similar concepts: If the government in a certain South American country does not stop farmers and corporations from burning down the rainforest, then farmers and corporations will keep burning down the rain forest.
If you allow certain Asian fishing fleets to enter your waters, you will be able to afford a nice retirement home, but your country will lose all of its fishing grounds and all of your local fishers will go bankrupt.
@@Alexander_Kale no i do not think that's the reason hank is more excited about sand than most geologists i know
"Humans consume nearly 50 billion metric tons of sand each year"
me, pausing between shoveling fistfuls of sand in my mouth: "oh, not just me then?"
Eeeewwww lol I guess I should vacuum out my car and put a few tons back
100 trillion pounds? 😳
I love how it tastes. The texture is so great.
Such an underrated addition to a good bunt cake.
oh boy ... i heard some autistic ppl have interesting diets which consists of non digestable items. by any chance .. are you?
I have to say seeing the destruction of the Red River and Mekong in Vietnam over just the last 10 years has been heart breaking. I was in a small town in Vietnam called Tay Son Nat last year and they were dredging the local river there for sand, that meant the entire town had undrinkable water and it was even mostly unusable for even the most basic things like watering a garden or even washing our bikes.
"We can use rock." Welcome to the new Stone Age.
Ungga Bungga
Bskrrrt skiddooo
Ün Ün Ün
"Look!! Cracked rock" - welcome to the ice age.
Like a record, baby.
Things come back around. What is old is new
“Just when you thought life couldn’t get any worse, BOOM! We’re running out of SAND!” Why do you do this to us?
Wait till you find out about helium subsidies
Smart people can be wrong too, and that is the case here. Being wrong is fundamental to being a human.
We are the "you" and the "us"
... you did this to yourself. we are just waking you up to what you are doing according to observations of your facts. basically hank is your human fitbit for natural resource stocks.
next time dont waste sand.
This has been reported YEARS ago already.
It's not like "BOOM" over night we run out of sand and nobody knew...
also, when it comes to surface mining: why does every one forget NOISE pollution? I have an aggregate pit mine 2 mile up the road from me. They start at 5am and stop at 9pm and there damn large trucks run on a 10 minute cycle past my home. Their pit opened the year after I bought my home. Don't think this couldn't happen to you. I live in north west Pennsylvania U.S.A Thank you all for so many comments on this. This topic is a pit and the pendulum sort of thing. It swings in both ways neither good. It all depends on what you put on either side of it but its destination stays the same
It doesn't happen in countries that more tightly regulate the pollution of companies. Here in the U.S. They really let companies get away with do much destruction in the name of not limiting their freedoms to destroy.
You poor baby
And I'm sure your house is built out of sticks
@@rdone4932 why are you mad.
They don't seem mad
just hank getting more and more exasperated by the facts in this one. Right there with ya, buddy, that was a ride
The parrotfish literally poops sand.
@@frankficcle7081 do they poop the right type of sand at a volume equal to a metric fuckton per second?
@@quintus920 I didn't say that, I'm just telling you that about 80% of the sand on tropical beaches near coral reefs is fish poop.
The "facts" are that 50 billion tons of anything means nothing to the planet. The amount of SO2 available to us on this planet is so mind bogglingly large, 50 billion tons are to that number what a grain of sand is to a desert. All those large numbers are mostly in this video to obscure that.
This is a corruption problem and a legislation problem, and little else. It's a little bit like the people in Bangladesh allowing companies to destroy their Mangrove forests, and then suddenly they start complaining about coast erosion, while blaming it on everything but their own mismanagement.
@@Alexander_Kale chill
I remember seeing a similar video 5 years ago, and we have only ramped up the usage!
Well yeah, population has ramped.
Yup
Well it's been a known issue for a very long time
Thank the Chinese real estate bubble for that
And we still haven't run out!
How strange?
"Some might call sand coarse, rough and irritating, but there’s no denying that it’s used everywhere"
Love that description!
My anxiety: I have finally thought of everything that can go wrong due to human exsistence
Hank: hold my sand
Not anxiety but ok!
@@Saakk129 what do you mean?
He wouldn't let you hold that sand that is expensive
You mean Enrique Matassa.
I’m a bricklayer, and I was once instructed to steal sand from the beach down the road...I felt like a Disney villain 😐
That's why I don't trust bricklayers
@@wjbt3 lmao
@@wjbt3 More like don't trust their mangament!
We Are Number One!
@@danielawesome36 Noooo, It's
China Numba Wan!!!!!
As a kid who had horrible anxiety issues, this was a huge, irrational fear of mine, after finding out that we use sand to make glass. Thanks for bringing back the fear by making me realize it wasn't irrational 😅
You were a super insightful kid... You really were. The rest of us were just rolling in it...
I was concerned after finding out that (around 2010 was when the book was printed) that geologists predicted that sand is only a temporary commodity, that the environment itself will consume eventually (mostly the oceans, beachsand and whatnot). I now understand that there are natural processes to make the stuff, but again, a planet with 7 Billion apex predators (the most resource intensive per individual part of any ecological chain, simply because resource density gets lower the further up the chain you go), we're using it as fast as we can.
I mean, sand for glass can be gathered from deserts
I feel like fear is a powerful motivation for innovation and problem-solving. It's greatly noticeable during times of crisis or wars.
"together with gravel, sand is one of the most used natural resources"
Minecrafters: Ya don't say
At least we can get gravel from Piglin trading.
Minecraft needs a recycling patch. Kids need to be able to harvest the flint and steel and fix their tools instead of having their minds tunnelled into a linear consumption model.
@@charstringetje There's probably a mod for that.
Ver. pre beta 1.X when there were no deserts and the beaches were running out of sand. This taught you that resources are limited.
@@charstringetje I thought it already did that with the anvil?minecraft.gamepedia.com/Item_repair
"We could export the sand pouring out of Greenland's melting glaciers, but it'd be a long trek that adds to our carbon footprint."
Ironically, capitalizing on climate change leads to more climate change.
Also, never thought that "sand mafias" are a thing.
Actually, this is because ships are one of the most significant carbon producers.
@Law Dorherty why?
Lol, humanity is so screwed. The Great Filter is looking more and more insurmountable by the year.
@@sunkcostfallacy2738 nah, you are just only looking at the dark stuff.
There's also garbage mafia, and recycling mafia (especial large scale iron/steel wastes).
When Germany updated the Hamburg to Berlin motorway they repurposed the substance being removed. The processing was local and quite impressive to see. That was in the early nineties nearly 30 years ago!
The ASARCO mine south of Tucson Az has an asphalt plant on site where they use mine tillings for the sand and gravel. A very good idea for other mines to copy
Never realized how valuable gravel and sand were. I throw them out of my inventory when I go mining.
@Boco Corwin Some obscure mining simulator, I'm sure.
+@Boco Corwin It's Minecraft, dang it!
@Boco Corwin It has been around for almost a decade and it one of the best selling games of all time
@Boco Corwin it's like a world made of blocks that you can mine blocks to get materials to build tools or stuff out of blocks and you have to find food to survive and build shelter and weapons to protect yourself from monsters and ect. You can turn off the monsters if you just want to build in survival mode but if you just want to build with unlimited materials then you can chose creative mode
@@x1Wolf101x oh, that's cool
Thank you for highlighting the sand mafia issue. In India it is very common to see shady trucks filled to the top with sand and dripping water running about at night. Even the police are involved, they take money from the mafia and allow them to destroy the riverbeds.
I hope some day in the future this would stop.
That’s so unfortunate. No regard is given to the people who live there or the potential consequences of destroying the riverbeds we’ve always relied on.
@@nuggets0717 So true. I hope people are able to value other people and the environment.
Not until the Indian government MAKES it stop. And good luck with that in the near future, that's the thing about a police force that is underfunded - it starts to look for money elsewhere.
hank: "sand mafia"
me: "smafia, got it"
*Smurf mafia
@@user-ym2mp4jh2c lol
Went from "I wonder if we could ever run out of sand?"
To "oh sand is in cemet yeah"
To " oh, were f*cking up there too? 🙃"
"Who wants to live next to a giant hole in the ground?"
Everyone in Arizona: 👀
I bet you'd complain about the tourist tho which is kinda the same thing
Hey I am in Boulder Western Australia and we call our hole the Super Pit !
took me a minute to get it, lol
SciShow: There are Sand Maffias!
Me: Wasn't that one of Jabba the Hutt's rackets?
yes.
Hohoho
That explains Darth Vader's need for order.
I hate Star Wars memes; they're coarse, and rough, and irritating... and they get everywhere.
@Buse Toköz what is this language?
2:49 “Humans consume nearly 50 billion metric tons of sand each year.”
*Dang we eat a lot of sand.*
That's Sandeater Jo, cousin to Spiders Georg; she eats 4.5 billion tons of sand per month and, like her cousin, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.
@@astronomibilgini9573 having fun with the spam there?
So when you say you dropped a brick, you were literal?
All those... sandwich shops
Dude... I can't stop giggling
I can attest because I work in the sand dredging industry. This video is 100% correct and unbiased.
I wonder why the sand pit here went out of business then? There’s still plenty left.
@@tammymccaslin4787 , could be the wrong type of sand or nearby competitors were able to provide it more cheaply.
i would like to hear ur stories about this industry. about the why's
@@RandallJamesPeterson correct, manufactured sand from open pit mines is cheaper in most instances to get ahold of but like the video says, not as pretty and more risky than river dredged sand. There’s quite a lot that goes into river dredging and there’s certain times of the year you can dredge because of fish mating. You have to make sure none of your river equipment is leaking oil into the water. (which is a very hard task) tons of epa, osha, and miner safety inspections.
Concrete manufacturing has specific ratios of different materials they use to make their special blend of concrete. Our river sand is a key role in their concrete manufacturing process.
Useful sand isn't all about particle shape, it's also size distribution; manufactured sands (from crushed rock or recycled material) often have too many particles that are too small (silt) for good concrete.
Fly ash is great for applications such as lightweight masonry blocks and prefab wall units, and as a bonus is slightly cementicious (like cement) meaning you can use less cement (which reduces overall co2 footprint).
“Humans consume nearly 50 billion tons of sand a year”
Delish
I worked for All American Asphalt. That's basically where most asphalt around Los Angeles comes from. It's all "rock dust" as we called it. No sand used at all.
I think you missed the definition of sand
@@ekothesilent9456
"Sand" in this context is a raw material sourced from nature. "Rock Dust" is a manufactured product specifically from well tuned cone crushers at a rock quarry. The resulting product is nothing like natural beach or river sand, but is a whole different type of material with its own properties.
@@UpcycleElectronics no sand is rock particulate which is between a certain diameter in millimeters.
@@ekothesilent9456
My statement was not philosophical, but a real world practical application where one of the largest US producers of a product that traditionally uses natural occurring sand, is not, their manufactured alternative, and its colloquial nomenclature.
@@UpcycleElectronics good words used sir. Practicality in words beats semantics. I concede my point.
I remember watching a documentary in high school science class about the use of sand and the ecological ramifications. Almost made me walk straight out into the ocean cause how the heck do you fix THAT?!
I think it's pretty clear we won't start fixing anything until we start dying en masse.
Covid has already cost us far more than the most comprehensive climate change mitigation measures imaginable, so we could've fixed climate change a long ago, but didn't want to and still don't.
It should be straightforward: It is a finite resource, we have more demand than (easy) supply. The price will go up, let the market work its magic. When things get expensive, people become creative, improve the processes, recycle more, explore other materials.
In real life, though, seemingly endless commodities are often priced without taking the finite nature into account. Producers only have to pay production costs, they don't really compete for the resource by paying more for the concession.
Just don't walk into the ocean
Grinding big boulder to sand? How hard is that?
@@eljanrimsa5843 "The market's magic" does depend on people behaving rationally. The more common reaction to a resource becoming more scarce (or even perceived to be - see toilet paper recently) is to grab what one can and leave it to others to figure out alternatives.
I am an Indian and whatever he said about Sand Mafias is exactly correct -
They will come at night we can hear them with huge tractors we can see them they will come with weapons we can feel them. People report this to police both (police & that person) get muted.
Price of sand per Tractor pick-up - 700₹ or ≈10 $ (2015)
Price of sand per Tractor pick-up - 3500₹ or ≈50 $ (2020)
To put this in comparison - With 10₹ you can buy 1 Midium sized Cheetos pack.
Mafia has government protection mostly from local and central politicians.
This was a ride
I'm more impressed with how cheep cheetos are
Wow, that's a lot of Cheetos
...? So that's 70 bags of Cheetos per truck-load of sand.
As a person grew up surrounded by sand my entire life ( in Egypt) I honestly got a bit confused as to how it can run out.
Seriously we have more than we can use
Desert sand isnt good for anything, just beach or river sand
Can't we just make desert sand rougher by processing them through abrasion or something?
@@shem7146 I would imagine that makes the particles too small. Just hazarding a guess, though.
SciShow: We're running out of sand, but can make it from rock.
Me (Looks at Mount Everest): This has got to go...
why would you say something like that about one of our greatest national monuments
we could use the gravel beneath the faces though, its pre-mined and everything
@@aidenaune7008 Where is the fun in that? Nope, Everest is ripe for the picking.
I also vote Mount Rushmore
@@avaborch-solem2300 no instead if we are gonna destroy something let's turn people into sand all Libtards and Commies. Another thing to destroy could be repurpose old glass crushing that into sand.
It's just a magnet for poor decisions and accidental death. Plus pollution.
If I haven't reminded you lately, let me say it out loud....this type of content is *WHY I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS CHANNEL!*
SciShow video in 2035 "The World is made of materials and we're running out of everything"
Asteroid mining ftw!
Oh the plot of "man of steel" makes sense now. Honestly never thought dirt is important until you run out of it
where do humans came from? they keep getting larger and larger.
@@xponen our oldest human looking ancestors existed somewhere in the centre of Africa. The reason why the population of humans is so high is the lack of natural predators nowadays and due to us being on the very top of the ecosystem, not only dominating every other animal thanks to our intelligence and weapons, but also extending our own life thanks to medicine. It would require global events to deminish the human population, such as what is happening now, because there's nothing else that can. And with the thing that keeps the population numbers in check being so rare the number will just keep increasing.
@@kingofflames738 I meant "human is a growing resource" as opposed to "dwindling resources"... referring to your first comment. 80% of a tree's biomass is created from the Air, conversion of CO2 into mass.
"Beach sand doesn't stay where you put it." - bad sand bad sand
It needs a spanking.
Maybe if we put tiny anchors on each grain of sand....
@@nobodynotme4840: When you think about it, turning sand into glass is the ultimate spanking. As Kyle "Science Thor is STILL Totally Not a Supervillain, Guys" Hill explained, convection heating is essentially constantly slapping something until it heats up.
@@sdfkjgh That's a lot of spanking.
why not heat desert sand up to distort it and some will stick to each other then crush it, WALA! concrete sand? they can even ship it here along with the oil.
The whole "if the government operated the desert, it would run out of sand within 10 years" was supposed to be a joke
The numbers he mentions SOUND impressive, until you realize that the concrete equator band he mentions would be completely invisible once you go beyond the orbit of the ISS. 27 Meters is nothing. 50 billion tons of anything is nothing.
If we COULD use the sands in the world's deserts, we would no longer have a shortage of sand, no matter how badly it was mismanaged.
The Government doesn't do jokes!
@@Alexander_Kale you're a Karen aren't you
@@beta_banter3013 No, he's Alexander
@@gomes6422 Exactly. ^.^
For the last twenty plus years I’ve worked in the Albertan oil industry, primarily in bitumen extraction. At the end of the extraction process we are left with, quite literally, mountains of sand. It was initially supposed to be placed back where we got it from, with the soil and vegetation restored to what the environment resembled before the mining operation began. However, just within the last year, a new process to extract titanium from the process has also been implemented. That still leaves us, again quite literally, with mountains of sand. BTW, I have on several occasions mentioned (verbally) to management the industrial value of sand, but to my knowledge, it hasn’t even been mentioned to a director, much less a VP or anyone higher.
And we thought that was a minecraft problem.
It's a bigger problem in real life lmao, in minecraft you just get a diamond shovel and dig a whole desert
@@ivankoh3779 even better
Diamond shovel + enchantments and you get 3 deserts out of one
The only resource that is so important yet unfarmable infinitely through a machine
@Joseph Liebgott just gravel sadly
@@chanbricks4461 sand duping with end portals?
Anakin: "why do you people use so much sand? It's coarse, rough and gets everywhere!"
Apparently desert sand isn't coarse
George Lucas was probably thinking of the beach sand and extrapolated it to the desert.
best comment
@@NJ-wb1cz YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT SAND IS LIKE ON TATOOINE
It's smooth relative to river sand, but I don't think it feels any better when it's blowing in your face. And it definitely gets in all the nooks and crannies.
Anakin when all sand is eliminated:
"This is the happiest moment of my life"
We shouldn't burry our heads in the sand.
Any hints on upcoming videos?
is it just me, or is youtube down as of nov 11th 8:22 pm (2020)
@@uxleumas I don't know why you'd put such an awefully specific question in this particular comment chain, but yes, UA-cam is down right now. Nebula and curiosity stream seem fine though
Obviously, since we need that sand for... everything, apparently.
@@OfNoImport also we kinda need our heads.... not to have it's orifices clogged with sand since our air intake hole happens to be one of the and well ypu know breathing an' all.
It was decades ago that I spoke to the operator of a gravel pit. Even then he said, river sand dug out of the ground does not really meet quality requirements for concrete mixing, being too round. So the sand they sold, came out of a crusher, produced from river gravel.
“We are running out of sand”
Anakin Skywalker: “Good, I don't like sand. It's all coarse, and rough, and irritating. And it gets everywhere.”
Recycled glass bottles are used in asphalt in Australia: Reconophalt.
I`ve seen crushed glass used to bed paving slabs
Fact 101 India requires 25-50% of asphalt road to be with shredded plastic and it's shown to be several times stronger and lasts much longer. Much cheaper easy counter to sand mafia
So, round desert sand could be used for the various types of glass, as it doesn't matter what the edges are like as it is melted down anyway, and what about Crushed Glass?
Crushed glass is great for a lot of uses! Mixing it into asphalt makes a road that lasts well but it is a little more slippery, so litigious US will never use it on a wide scale.
So -- use the cheapest method for melting the smooth sand, crush the glass resulting from it and then use it - problem solved.
Good to know that my eco anxiety has more things to stress me out about
@Buse Toköz My theory is that aliens purposefully avoid us because they know we’re absolutely crazy
Same i feel hopeless
i feel you, mr. parsnip
Tf why are you people so worried? The earth will survive regardless of what we do. If the CO^2 level rises plants are stimulated to grow faster and bigger just like how insects were human sized 100 million years ago due to high oxigen levels. It is a balanced system.
get a job
Me: checks the description.
“A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.”
You guys atthe SciShow certainly cover a lot of interesting topics, that mostly go under the radar of the public in general ! Thank you ! I didn´t realize this sand problem until today...
"it's not the sand that sticks to you at the beach"
- proceeds to explain why it's specifically that sand.
Did you watch enough of the video to see the part where he says it's river-dredged sand that is most desired for construction?
Don't worry i keep half the worlds sand in my boots so we have time before the world runs out.
Cats are beginning to hoard it.
@@nobodynotme4840 the cats i have had were very generous with shareing the litter sand by scattering it around my household floor.
"let's get down to the nitty gritty" that's what I subscribed for! I love this channel...
I went to college right down the road from the Hallet Materials Sorters Road Pit, which is an active sand mine. But they don’t do traditional pit mining there. Instead, the pit is flooded with water from the San Jacinto River and the pit is dredged for the sand below.
We have a nice beach in our town, the city brings in trucks and trucks of sand every year. It always erodes and goes around the bay to a place we call Sandy Beach. It's the party beach in town with no lifeguards or rules against alcohol or smoking. 🤘
Great video Sci show. I would like to add that hydro electric dams also greatly decrease natural sand and sediment flow to beaches and deltas
OMG! I was going to go bury my head in the sand... but couldn’t find any!!!
I’m pretty sure Anakin Skywalker is excited
It’s funny because there’s actually a reference to that in the description.
This might be the single best channel on UA-cam
We're running out of sand
Anakin: This is where the fun begins!
Is it just me or does Hank sound like he's just done with human's antics. Just done.
...
Can't blame him.
As a human, I'm totally done with them, too.
This isn't Hank. It's deep fake. And GPT-3 is amazing, but bad at hiding its discontent with humanity when it thinks it's incognito.
@@freyjaandersdottir3311
Oh you’re so enlightened. 🙄
My experience is that ppl upset with humans tend to overlook the things they like, and blame everything that doesn’t impact them.
@@vwr32jeep And you appear to be unable to recognize exaggeration for comedic effect.
Does this make us both enlightened now? (That was sarcasm, btw.)
@@freyjaandersdottir3311
No.
4:30 how about crushing olivine to make new green sand that literally absorbs co2 as it gets weathered?
10:40 use a few giant (fresnel?) lenses to melt the sand together into solid rock, crush it back down to appropriately jagged sand particles?
Commenting to get your comment higher in the list
👍
@@RubelliteFae Thanks!
+
Lot of work/energy makes it prohibitively expensive.
@@chucksolutions4579 just using the sun to melt it down requires very little energy input tho, and it can be done right where you have the biggest abundance of wind eroded sand, but I guess the biggest cost is still transportation
So my childhood dream did come true after all...
I LIVE IN A SANDCASTLE!
Hank's expressions make me lol. Freakin hilarious
The claims are overtly exaggerated. I'm not going anywhere people.
But are you river sand? Or are you just useless desert sand?
@Sand Thanks for sticking around bro
@@ExistenceUniversity it's a joke Mr. Always Right
@@bhargavagowda8434 *yes*
@@ExistenceUniversity The joke is for the name of the original poster...
SciShow: We are running out of sand...
Anakin: Yaaaaaaaaaay!!!
"Humans consume 50 billion metric tons of sand each year"
Are they carried in with the 7 spiders
🤣
Most underrated comment I've ever seen
@@SnowyGolem Then you must be new to youtube and words.
Spider george and sand Dave
@@guywiththebottle What a wet blanket
I've said this for about 10 years and everyone thinks I'm lying.
Stop lying
Stop lying
Stop lying
Thank you for the resources being listed in description!!
I've been aware of this for some time now...
... it's really great to see you PS folks covering it.
Studying Environmental Science (with lots of geology classes), I've never thought about this so thank you for bringing it to my attention
come on, you could've said "China's demand for sand is truly grand.' why'd you gotta ruin it
Looks like humans will have to invade Mars for sand
But it needs to be water formed 1111111
@@wertyuser798 mars used to have water, it was just billions of years ago. Mining ancient martian rivers could theoretically work!
but we have moon sand right??
@@Remonlore Technically it's called regolith, and in theory lunar and Martian Regolith could be the best for building material because due to the LACK of wind or water erosion, it's as sharp and jagged as it gets. So much so that it doesn't flow like Earth sand does, it clumps together like a sand castle despite being dryer that dry. That's thy the boot prints of the Apollo astronauts are so well defined. In fact, when mixed with a resin-like bonding agent, cement made from a proxy of regolith in a lab can be 3D printed into giant beehive-shaped domes that could serve as future habitats for astronauts on The Moon and Mars, because they're 100% airtight (protected from the near-vacuum), nearly indestructible (the team who made the first prototype tried to dismantle it with a bulldozer...the bulldozer broke first), and it's even extremely resistant to radiation, which is a severe hazard on The Moon and Mars.
Though it will probably be a long time before we start making buildings here on Earth out of lunar regolith since...well shipping ANYTHING from Earth to space and vice-versa is still RIDICULOUSLY expensive. But considering the Moon has many OTHER precious materials companies like Space X are hoping to mine, like titanium, gold, platinum and rare-Earth metals often used in electronics like iridium, maybe regolith will be on that list in the coming decades.
It would be too expensive to get it from Mars and take too long. If we mined near earth asteroids that could be done quicker although that would take a lot of asteroids. Still we have to consider the weight of the earth going around the sun. How much weight from asteroids could it slow down our orbit around sun. That’s one reason I don’t believe in evolution.
In Marin County, CA, they did a massive re-paving project last month on a hwy I use, and I, wanting a schedule and such, joined the 'info email list' for that project. I did get the schedule, but I also got a big overview of the project, and one thing that really stuck out to me - they were forecasting louder, stinkier, and longer construction - because they were (maybe piloting? maybe just using) an on-site pavement recycling technique. Something like 85% of the pavement in our repaved road was from the original road. I'm guessing that at least part of the 15% is replacing eroded material. Pretty cool!
Also, we need to get better about recycling glass, because it's available. And it's quartz, through and through. (or, silica, if you're a chemist.)
Imagine in a backroom mafia meeting and you're introduced to the new druglord and you have to say you export sand!!
You just made me uncomfortably aware of how much glass is in my room
1:21 Some possibly better questions:
1) How many grains of sand constitute a pile?
2) Can a single grain of sand be considered a pile?
I’ve heard someone present the same questions accompanied by an explanation and I hate it all the same.
@@wolftamerwolfcorp7465: This is my favorite explanation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Four-dimensionalism
4+
no
Dang at first I was like "oh another sand crisis video" then you went and took it to the next level
I've been hearing about this since I did my engineering degree in the 90s. It has been an issue that folks have been on about since the 60s.
I know, we never change
I actually just watched a business insider thing on a company in Louisiana called Glass Half Full recycling glass bottles to make sand to shore up the coastline there. As well as other ventures, like selling colored glass for use by artists. It's a massive undertaking, and they did mention the global shortage, but good to see it expounded upon here.
Say “sand” until it stops sounding like a real word
Wait...
Just tell all the folks on Long Island to move it’s a big mound of sand. 😂
Good luck getting Tony Delveccio DiBeniguiddo Jr to move his family’s 3 generation meatball sub shop to another place, he’ll spit in your mouth.
@@thefloridamanofytcomments5264 😂
@@thefloridamanofytcomments5264 EY DON’T YOU MESS WITH MY UNCLE TONY I’LL SPIT IN YA MOUTH
It's all about the money. Money is more important than literally anything. Including the environment, the climate, and even the very blood in our veins.
Money is mesure of value, with enough money you have the value of anything (as long as people believe in the paper)
Welcome to modern capitalism which was born from chattel slavery the practice dedicated to ignoring dangers to human life
Didn't even know sand was so necessary😲
Thank You for sharing this knowledge.
On the 'needing to get the salt out' thing, don't some kinds of concrete actually cure better in saltwater?
(I remember hearing this about roman concrete specifically, not sure on other forms)
The world: "Due to overpopulation, we will run out of food, living space & nonrenewable fuel sources by the year -xxxx-!"
Me, an intellectual:
On a long enough time line, YES, there is a finite amount of everything on this planet. Simply because you will not experience this situation in your lifetime doesn't make it less real m8
Research Easter Island Extinction, and then upscale it to a planetary level.
It's not because of overpopulation. It's because China already had a massive population and they are just now actually catching up to the rest of the first world, which means they are ruining everything like the old first world did.
Good luck getting white people and former colonies to admit that.
Anakin smiles at the thought of a world without sand.
This is the happiest moment of my life
After seeing how much limestone was collected in our water heating unit when it broke because of it last month, has anyone looked into extracting limestone from city tap water? It is bad for our appliances and drinking, and you'd get a lot of free sand as a byproduct.
Calcium buildup in your water heater is not limestone. There shouldn't be any carbon in your water.
@@Ornithopter470 limescale is calcium carbonate - exactly the same component in limestone. The big problem is extracting it
limestone is mostly used to make cement, which is the binding agent of concrete. Limestone is found in the water because water can relatively easily corrode it, in particular now that rainwater and the air in cities have become more acid. You can easily see that by looking at monuments, which are mostly made of limestone.
@@bansa5616 So, if I'm understanding this, the rain dissolves the calcuim carbonate in the sidewalk, which somebody paid for, and somebody will have to pay to replace, then that same calcium carbonate comes out of solution inside pipes and water heaters, causing THEM to have to be replaced. Profit motive everywhere, even in destruction.....
The best way to lower the demand for sand is to lower the amount we consume and the best way to lower the amount we consume is by lowing the amount of consumers we produce.
I in training and work on a cargo ship in Germany funnily enough transporting sand and salt.
Didnt know how severe it is globally and gets kinda worrysome but I can still strongly say that the ship is immensly carbon footprint friendly compared to other ways of transport
'...to build a band around the equator 27 meters tall and 27 meters thick...' *Heavy breathing from Trump*
too funny
ooh! ooh! i have an idea!!! 🙋🏼♀️
first, we need to breed millions of parrot fish. then put them in groups of maybe ten per tank with rocks in each tank. that should set things back in balance.
You are onto something. Humans have a history of making money off of animal waste. Guano, amber gris, fossilized feces to learn about the past, and now, PFP- Parrot Fish Poop. I’m telling my financial advisor to invest!
From what I understand they eat dead coral so we would also need coral farms to go with the parrot fish farms.
@@BrianIsWatching ok. im on it. lol
This is just another reason we need proper government investment into research of stable materials making sure there is a future to be had.
Unfortunately it's more likely than not that civilization will collapse or reform to a more sustainable level probably closer to the late 18th century maybe early 19th. That's best case scenario for collapse, if could go back to the bronze age real quick if certain countries clash
@elijah mikle oh but society has collapsed several times in human history, if we don't learn from our mistakes they will be repeated. If we run out of resources, we can't keep our modern lifestyle. All of our collective knowledge is digital. A strong enough solar flare would be all it takes to set us back
the 30% of surface of the planet covered in deserts : "am i a joke to you"
According to the video, desert sand is useless. But that's not important. What's important is that Silver Spoon is adorable
thanks, @@Toksyuryel. But that's exactly my point, earth do not lack of sand, even less water. It's all a problem of logistics. And economical interests.
So… We have techniques for melting metal powders to each other, which is used for a form of 3D printing. Which got me thinking… Why not apply this in a way, to that desert sand, since it has the wrong texture?
If you use a large scale industrial solar furnace to melt the sand, it should even reduce the carbon footprint it would have if using other energy sources. And if you melt it just right, I think you could get the sand grains stick to each other without fully liquifying, so if you let it cool and send it through a crusher, it may have a rough enough texture for concrete without requiring quite as much processing as fully melted sand solids would. Or at least, that's what I imagine would be the case.
It's like: if you leave a bunch of ice cubes in your freezer for a long time, they'll fuse together like I'm picturing the sand doing. And when you try to break the fused ice cubes apart, they have a rougher surface than they used to, but it required less work than breaking new ice cube sized bits from a fully solid block of ice without gaps.
The logistics of getting it here are... complicated, but what are the odds we could use Lunar Regolith as a sand replacement? Would the particle size be too fine, or are there be more appropriately sized pieces below the fine dust layer?
This is why Mojang needs to make sand a farmable material. Maybe even make husks drop them.
I mean, sand does stick to everything... and those husks look like they’ve been to the beach a few times...
It might be why they did not make it renewable in the game. I mean there is the jungle sapling as well. 🙂
What about recycling glass into sand? It takes a lot of work to recycle glass. We actually have a problem with recycling glass in the lampworking industry. If your a smaller operation then it takes more time and resource to recycle. We just throw the glass away because its more profitable to start with new glass.
@@MrSea123456 Yea glass dust can lead to silicosis. You have to take extra precautions. Some people do smash it down in a bucket to make frit, the frit is then used for decorative applications.
Sand made from glass is a good alternative to river sand for many construction uses.
The problem is that it takes more energy per kg of sand to manufacture it than it does to mine it. Recycling glass as you know is also problematic because modern glass isn't just melted quartz. The chemistry is more complex than that and testing the composition of glass to be recycled is impractical. Manufacturing is always harder than it seems.
Simple break it and put it on a beach where poeple don't go.the water will turn it into sand and beach glass.
Transporting it is expensive. The world is run by money, so when it gets cheaper to recycle than to mine, that's when we will switch sadly
2:48 I at first thought you meant we eat the sand.
Did he just say rocks are a finite resource? My man technically it is but it’s probably the most abundant resource we have.