Copper smelters from 3,000 years ago may have experimented with materials just enough to launch the Iron Age. The Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age as the refining process of iron was discovered.

Steel has underpinned modern life for centuries, but it comes at an expensive cost. The industry is responsible for nearly 7 percent of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions, driven by blast ...

Copper smelters at the site used copper ores that lacked iron. Adding the iron oxide hematite to the furnace helped the copper metal to separate more easily from the impurities in the ore. Credit: Dr.

Buried deep in the south Georgia rolling hills, a tiny archaeological site has been rewriting history. Uncovered in the late 1950s, the Kvemo Bolnisi workshop was considered to be one of the ...

Ancient copper smelters may have accidentally set the stage for the Iron Age. At a 3,000-year-old workshop in Georgia, researchers discovered that metalworkers were using iron oxide not to smelt iron ...

Research from Cranfield University sheds new light onto the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, showing how experimentation with iron-rich rocks by copper smelters may have sparked the ...

U.S. Steel’s notoriously outdated Edgar Thomson Works handles the molten substance left behind by smelting iron ore the same way it did 150 years ago: by dumping it into slag pits. They’re as low-tech ...

The Moon is rusting — and it’s Earth’s fault. Scientists have found that oxygen particles blown from Earth to the Moon can turn lunar minerals into haematite, also known as rust 1. The discovery adds ...