Thorium-232 is the only primordial isotope of thorium and makes up effectively all of natural thorium. It has a half life of 14 billion years, and is thus only slightly radioactive. Thorium cannot be used to make atomic weapons.

Thorium is more abundant in the earth's crust than tin. The USA alone has enough thorium to last for many thousands of years.

The energy value of thorium in the earth's crust is more than the energy value of all the uranium in the earth's crust and fossil fuels combined.

One ton of thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tons of uranium.

One pound of thorium equals the energy potential of about 3 million pounds of coal.

One 3.5” diameter sphere of thorium, about the size of an extra large apple, could produce an amount of electricity equivalent to the yearly consumption of one average American for about 8,000. years.

Beauty of Snowflakes

This is just plain beautiful, no matter which way you slice it. Using the magic of time-lapse photography and microscopy, Vyacheslav Ivanov captured the formation of those ice crystals we call snowflakes that caused so much grief in the northeastern US over the past several weeks.
Mesmerizing, captivating, pick your adjective, the time-lapse will have you glued to the screen and help you to remember that this crazy world we live in is beautiful from the smallest scale on uThe ice crystal(s) in snowflakes owe their six-fold rotational symmetry to the hydrogen bonds in water molecules. As water freezes, water molecules bound to other water molecules crystallize into a hexagonal structure, where each point on the hexagon is an oxygen atom and each side of the hexagon is a hydrogen bonded to an oxygen. As freezing continues, more water molecules are added to this microscopic six-sided structure, causing it to grow in size into the six-sided macroscopic structure that we recognize as snow flakes.