A coalition of billionaires led by Bill Gates has thrown its financial weight behind a startup hoping to build a “Google Maps for the earth’s crust” to hunt for new sources of cobalt. The startup, ...

A professor has helped create a powerful new algorithm that uncovers hidden patterns in complex networks, with potential uses in fraud detection, biology and knowledge discovery. University of ...

In mining, billion-dollar bets depend on how someone reads a rock. Exploration starts by drilling narrow tubes of rock called “cores” that reveal the mineral potential underground. The way those cores ...

“These things are hard to tip over,” geologist Wilson Bonner assures me as the four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle he’s piloting tilts suddenly sideways, pitching me toward the churned up mud beneath our ...