I’m hereby dedicating the upcoming summer to mining gold … from nearby Superfund sites. That surely needs some serious explaining.
I established my summer schedule after reading about some rod-shaped, heavy-metal bacteria, Cupriavidus metallidurans. Currently, they go only by their Latin name, C. metallidurans. That makes them no less bad-ass, considering their ability to eat some of the world’s worst metal toxins – while coming out looking like solid 24K gold … literally!
Subscribe to keep reading
This story is from our archive. Get your SandPaper Annual Pass for access to our digital archive, plus everything else a pass includes. Details below.
Annual Pass — $18 Details
365-day access to:
- The complete SandPaper digital archive (stories date back to 2012).
- Full photo galleries from our photographers.
- The entire catalog of SandPaper games, puzzles and quizzes.
How it works
- Enter your email below and click to pay the one-time $18. Card details are entered on Stripe’s secure page.
- You’re in straight away — no password to create, and nothing to set up or manage.
- You stay signed in. If you’re ever signed out, or you read on a new phone or computer, we’ll email you a code to get you back in.
- Never auto-renews. Your pass is good for one year. We will email you when it expires so you can renew if you’d like.
See our site policies for more information.
Already a subscriber? We’ll email a code to get you back in.
