Salt mines are special compared to other underground excavation sites: once they are closed for extraction purposes, they can be opened for visitors, or for storage purposes--all because of their unique microclimate with natural air-conditioning and constant temperature and atmospheric pressure all year.

Forget crystal meth. The pseudo-religious Knights Templar drug cartel in western Mexico has diversified to the point that drug trafficking doesn't even rank among its top sources of income. The cartel counts illegal mining, logging and extortion as its biggest moneymakers, said Alfredo Castillo, the Mexican government's special envoy sent to restore the rule of law in Michoacan, the state controlled by the Knights Templar the last several years.

Photographs and stories of men who, today, live in the mountains and hunt for gold.

The Soma coal mine, where 301 workers lost their lives in a May 13 disaster, received a “perfect” score in March by an official inspector, who is the brother-in-law of a senior executive of the company, daily Hürriyet has revealed.

One of the forgotten battles of the first world war was fought for Chilean dirt. Daniel A Gross traces the explosive story of nitrates from South America to the western front

Deep inside Chile’s San Jose Mine, the collapse hit the miners as a roar of sound, as if a skyscraper were crashing around them. A single block of granite-like stone, as tall as a forty-five-story building, had broken loose and was falling through the layers of the mine. It was later estimated to weigh seven hundred thousand tons, twice the weight of the Empire State Building.

Rescuers freed three miners on Friday who had been trapped by a landslide at an illegal gold mine in southern Honduras, but eight more remained unaccounted for as the search moved into its second day. The workers were trapped when the entrance to the mine in San Juan Arriba collapsed on Wednesday. Officials said the mine, 70 miles (110 km) south of the Central American nation's capital Tegucigalpa, had been ordered to close a few months ago because it was unsafe.

Rescuers on Sunday worked to free 17 miners trapped following a gas explosion at a coal mine in western China, the country’s official news agency reported. The blast at the mine 120 kilometers (70 miles) from Urumqi, the capital of the sprawling Xinjiang region, happened on Saturday evening, according to the Xinhua News Agency. It said three other people working inside the mine at the time had been rescued.

Vast new areas of the ocean floor have been opened up in an accelerating search for valuable minerals including manganese, copper and gold.

The future will know us through our mines. Unlike many of the changes humanity has wrought on the planet’s surface, which will disappear in geologic time, some of our underground doings have left permanent scars. So argue the authors of a new paper examining such human impacts on Earth.

Despite being one of the poorest nations in the world, Afghanistan may be sitting on one of the richest troves of minerals in the world, valued at nearly $1 trillion, according to U.S. scientists.

Australia missed the Great Recession. While economies in other developed countries swooned as Lehman Brothers went under, the Lucky Country kept expanding, thanks largely to the apparently endless appetite in China for Australian iron, coal, and other minerals. China is the country’s top trading partner, accounting for 36 percent of Australian exports. In 2009, when the U.S. economy contracted nearly 3 percent, Australia grew 1.8 percent, and last year the Aussie economy expanded 2.4 percent.

Private companies want to mine asteroids for fuel, and build filling stations in space. A bill now in front of the US Congress would help by allowing them to own what they discover - but it might, if passed, meet stiff international opposition.

A coal mine shaft collapsed in northwestern China, killing 16 miners, an official said Saturday, highlighting the persistence of safety problems in the industry despite a leveling off of demand. Another 11 miners were injured in the disaster, which struck just before midnight Friday in Tiechanggou township outside the Xinjiang regional capital of Urumqi.

Surging water trapped at least 18 workers Tuesday in a coal mine in Turkey, officials and reports said — an event likely to raise even more concerns about the nation’s poor workplace safety standards.

This year a group of aerospace veterans and investors—including Google's Larry Page, filmmaker James Cameron, and X-Prize Foundation founder Peter Diamandis—announced an audacious venture: a company, Planetary Resources, dedicated to mining asteroids. Here's the full story on their futuristic quest.

With an estimated 1.6 billion tonnes of water ice at its poles and an abundance of rare-earth elements hidden below its surface, the moon is rich ground for mining. In this month's issue of Physics World, science writer Richard Corfield explains how private firms and space agencies are dreaming of tapping into these lucrative resources and turning the moon's grey, barren landscape into a money-making conveyer belt. Since NASA disbanded its manned Apollo missions to the moon over 40 years ago..

When his six brothers and sisters had all died of consumption in his birthplace of Providence, Rhode Island, William "Burro" Schmidt escaped to the desert of California to begin his life's work.

The Turda Salt Mine is now a veritable history museum of salt mining. The excellent state of preservation of mining and machinery used to transport salt, together with the cautious work carried out for prepararing the mine to become a tourist attraction, have made history and legend meet harmoniously here.

Every year, Americans are flushing a fortune down the toilet. Literally. More than 7 million tons of biosolids—treated sewage sludge—pass through US wastewater facilities annually. Contained within our shit are surprisingly large quantities of silver, gold, and platinum. But our days of wasting human waste may be numbered, if Kathleen Smith of the US Geological Survey has anything to say about it. She’s leading a new research program that’s examining the feasibility of...