Ask how much a single chatbot query costs the planet and the answers scatter wildly: anywhere from a tenth of a watt-hour to several watt-hours, and from five drops of water to roughly 45 millilitres. None of those figures is invented. Each measures a different thing, on a different model, inside a different data centre … Read more
Metallurgy has spent millennia treating contamination in recycled metal as a defect to flush out with fresh ore. An international research team has now inverted that logic, using machine learning to design cast iron that exploits the copper, tin and titanium found inside scrap. The resulting alloys are up to 15.2% stronger or 73.2% more … Read more
Blending road pavement with recycled plastic packaging waste has long tempted engineers with a double promise: a destination for hard-to-recycle material and longer-lasting highways. Fresh laboratory work from a Penn State-led research team now adds evidence to that case — while also flagging a measurement problem that could complicate how such pavements are judged in … Read more
Finland’s national authority LVV has ordered Tuike Finland Oy, Google’s Finnish subsidiary, to immediately suspend land-preparation work at two planned data center locations: Muhos, where roughly 330 hectares are affected, and Kajaani/Otanmäki, covering about 200 hectares. The reason: trees were felled before the mandatory Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) had been completed. Google has until 14 … Read more
Finland’s environmental licensing authority has ordered Google’s Finnish subsidiary to immediately suspend environmentally significant site preparation at two planned data center locations after contractors cleared hundreds of hectares of forest before mandatory environmental reviews were finished. The affected sites are Muhos and Kajaani, both part of a broader €13 billion Finnish buildout that the company … Read more