New technology could cement Indonesia’s dominance of vital nickel
But harvesting the crucial metal will be bad news for the country’s rainforests
Each year scientists discover an average of five new bird species. In 2013, on a trip to a remote set of islands in Indonesia, researchers found ten in six weeks—the biggest haul in more than a century. The region in question, known as Wallacea after Alfred Russel Wallace, a 19th-century naturalist, is one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. Its rainforests host creatures found nowhere else, such as the maleo, an endangered bird that uses sunlit beaches and geothermal heat to keep its eggs warm rather than incubating them itself.
Explore more
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “The nickel pickle”
More from Science & technology
Why carbon monoxide could appeal to the discerning doper
Professional cycling is debating whether to ban the poisonous gas
A sophisticated civilisation once flourished in the Amazon basin
How the Casarabe died out remains a mystery
Heritable Agriculture, a Google spinout, is bringing AI to crop breeding
By reducing the cost of breeding, the firm hopes to improve yields and other properties for an array of important crops
Could supersonic air travel make a comeback?
Boom Supersonic’s demonstrator jet exceeds Mach 1
Should you worry about microplastics?
Little is known about the effects on humans—but limiting exposure to them seems prudent
Wasps stole genes from viruses
That probably assisted their evolutionary diversification