The cars, cellphones, computers and televisions that people in the U.S. use every day require metals like copper, cobalt and platinum to build. Demand from the electronics industry for these metals is only rising, and companies are constantly searching for new places on Earth to mine them.

Scientists estimate that lots of these metals exist thousands of miles beneath Earth’s surface, in its molten core, but that’s far too deep and hot to mine. Instead, some companies hope to one day search for deposits that are literally out of this world — on asteroids.

The commercialization of asteroid mining is still a ways off, but in October 2023, NASA launched a scientific mission to explore the metal-rich asteroid Psyche. The main goal of the mission is studying the composition and structure of this asteroid, which could tell scientists more about Earth’s core since the two objects might have a similar makeup.

Both likely contain platinum, nickel, iron and possibly even gold – materials of commercial interest.

I am a planetary geologist whose work explores other planets and astronomical objects like Mars, Venus and the Moon. I will be following the Psyche mission closely, as this is the first time that scientists will be able to learn about the composition and structure of a possible piece of a planetary core similar to the Earth’s, without indirect seismic or magnetic measurements, or replicating the pressure and temperature conditions of the Earth’s core in our labs.

With the spacecraft estimated to arrive at the asteroid’s orbit in 2029, the findings from the Psyche mission will provide unique insights into the type of metals present on the asteroid’s surface, as well as their amount, and the minerals containing these metals. This data is essential both for scientists like me exploring the formation and evolution planetary bodies, as well as for companies investigating the possibility of asteroid mining.

Asteroid formation

Asteroids come in a variety of sizes. Some are the size of a town, while others are the size of a state. Most asteroids are made of rocks and represent the leftovers from the early formation of our solar system around 4.6 billion years ago.

Not every asteroid is the same – some, like Bennu, the target of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, are rich in carbon. These are very old, and they will teach scientists more about how planets formed and how life may have begun on Earth.

Others, like Psyche, are made of metals and potentially result from one or more collisions between astronomical objects when the solar system was forming. These collisions left debris flying through space — including potential pieces of a planet’s metal-rich core. A NASA spacecraft will orbit and analyze the surface of Psyche.

Mining in space

Not every mineral deposit on Earth is mineable. Companies first look for deposits with a high level of metal purity. They also investigate how affordable and feasible extracting the metal would be before choosing where to mine.

Similarly, before mining an asteroid, companies will have to think about all those factors, and they’ll have to come up with the infrastructure needed to mine at a distance and transport the metals they mine hundreds of millions of miles back to Earth. The technology to do that is still years away, and transporting metals would require major funding.

A few companies around the world have already started to think about what the best and lowest cost approach would be, drawing from processes similar to those used on Earth.

The first step would be finding a mineable metal deposit. Next, they’d drill and extract the metals on the asteroid. One of the most important differences with Earth mines is that each step would be undertaken remotely with spacecrafts orbiting around the asteroid and robots landing on its surface. Then, a spacecraft would send the resulting materials back to Earth.

Asteroid mining plans are still at their earliest stages. A few companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, with goals to extract metals from space, were acquired by other companies.

Experts can’t quite tell yet how acquiring valuable metals from asteroids would affect the global economy, but these metals could potentially flood the market and lower their values.

The Psyche mission is a huge step in figuring out what sort of metals are out there, and it may also answer questions about the composition and properties of Earth’s core.

Valerie Payré, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Iowa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The share of low-income U.S. families experiencing food insufficiency – sometimes or often not having enough food to eat – fell from 24.5% to 22.5% at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we found in a new study published in the November 2023 issue of Food Policy.

This 2 percentage-point decline coincided with the rapid expansion of a pilot program that allows the purchase of groceries online with benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP.

First mandated by the farm bill Congress passed in 2014, the SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot was initially rolled out on a limited basis in 2019.

Once COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. in early 2020, the pilot was rapidly expanded nationwide because the pandemic disrupted schooling, child care, transportation and in-person retail shopping. All of those changes curtailed access to food – especially for people with low incomes.

Nationally, SNAP online grocery purchases soared to US$155 million in June 2020, from less than $3 million in January of that year.

To investigate whether the rapid rollout of the Online Purchasing Pilot played a role in the food insufficiency decline at that time, we teamed up with Jordan Jones, a U.S. Department of Agriculture economist. We analyzed 12 weeks of data covering April 23, 2020, to July 21, 2020, from the Household Pulse Survey involving aproximately 10,000 low-income households.

Because the pilot was rolled out gradually in different states, we were able to leverage the differences in the timing using a two-way fixed-effects model. This method made it possible to determine that SNAP’s online purchasing program contributed to the decline in food insufficiency.

The prevalence of very low food security – a condition in which people may skip meals – increased for families with children in 2020. But the impact of the Online Purchasing Pilot was not larger for these households as opposed to those without any kids.

We believe this suggests that the ability to use SNAP benefits online does not resolve some food-related problems, such as those that arise because of school closures.

Low-income children are eligible for free meals at school. While many school districts found creative ways to distribute grab-and-go meals when school buildings were closed in 2020 and 2021, not all families were able to take advantage of those opportunities.

Why it matters

SNAP benefits currently help more than 42 million Americans buy food. The maximum monthly amount for a family of four in the 2024 fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, 2023, is $973 in the 48 mainland states and the District of Columbia.

Online options for using these benefits vary by state. In many locations, they include big stores that sell groceries, such as Walmart, Target, Whole Foods and Safeway, and some popular online retailers like Amazon.

Buying groceries online makes life easier for anyone who has trouble purchasing food in person, including people with disabilities, those with limited transportation access or those living in remote locations.

About 1 in 6 Americans pay for groceries online every week, and more than half have done so in the past 12 months.

What other research is being done in this field

This is one of several studies that have evaluated the impact of temporary food assistance policies at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. One member of our group, Grace Melo, conducted research with a different team that found that the mental health of children in low-income families that got a boost in SNAP benefits did not decline, even though they were disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

What’s next

Another member of our research team, Kyle Jones, is now researching how this pilot affects what kinds of groceries Americans are buying with SNAP benefits. He also plans to analyze how using the benefits for online purchases changes how much time people with these benefits spend on grocery shopping.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Grace Melo, Assistant professor of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University; Andrea Leschewski, Associate Professor of Applied Economics, South Dakota State University, and Kyle Jones, PhD Candidate in Economics, University of Kentucky

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate change poses the biggest risks to the most vulnerable people, and the same is true for businesses: Highly leveraged companies – those that have accumulated too much debt – are uniquely susceptible to climate shocks. That’s what we found in a forthcoming study in The Review of Corporate Finance that analyzed data from more than 2,500 U.S. publicly listed companies over 16 years.

As professors who study climate finance and corporate governance, we wanted to understand how climate change affects businesses, and how stakeholders – people who have a stake in a firm’s success, such as consumers, employees and investors – respond to it.

So we and our colleagues Sadok El Ghoul at the University of Alberta and Omrane Guedhami at the University of South Carolina conducted a study to examine how climate risk affects indebted companies.

We found that climate change delivers a one-two punch to highly leveraged firms by intensifying the costs that stakeholders impose on them.

Consider consumers. Researchers know that climate change can push people to mix up their purchasing patterns – by buying greener products, for example, or by engaging in boycotts. And while evolving consumer preferences pose a challenge to all businesses, it’s harder for a company that’s deep in debt to adapt.

Our study suggested as much. Two years after facing intense climate change exposure, highly indebted firms saw sales growth fall by about 1.4% on average, we found. In monetary terms, that translates into an average US$59.7 million loss per company.

Climate change also worries investors, we found. Companies exposed to climate risk face the threat of financial and operational disruptions that may drain lenders’ funds, particularly for firms already burdened with high debt. By examining capital issuance within our sample of companies, we found that climate exposure reduced firms’ net debt issuance – meaning new debt minus retired debt – by around $457 million per firm on average. This is an additional hurdle for indebted businesses trying to raise money.

Why it matters

Researchers have long known that indebted companies are at greater risk of product failures and losing market share when economic conditions go south. Having too much debt can even force companies out of business, as some analysts contend happened with Toys R Us.

Our research suggests that climate change, which the World Economic Forum predicts will endanger about 2% of global financial assets by 2100, will push already shaky companies to the brink. It underscores the immense and asymmetric effects global warming will have on businesses – and the reality that the most vulnerable firms are set to endure the worst.

What’s next

Our study highlights the disproportionate impacts of climate change on financially fragile businesses. Moving forward, we plan to explore the influence of climate change on firms’ business behaviors, particularly in terms of their ethical conduct.

Regarding climate solutions, one of us (Huan Kuang) has shown how companies can use innovation to reduce their climate vulnerabilities. In a working paper co-authored with Bing Liang of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, every 1% increase in climate-related innovation – as measured by patent data – was found to reduce firm-level carbon emissions growth by around 100,000 metric tons.

However, indebted firms may not rush to invest in new technologies without some prodding. That means policy incentives will be key to success, and further research is needed to determine what they should look like.

Climate change could also have more complicated economic effects than many people realize. For example, if it forces companies that aren’t viable out of business, that would be a good thing for the economy – at least in theory, as one of us (Ying Zheng) explored in a recent paper on a related subject.

Many questions remain unanswered, but it’s already clear that climate change will have important and multifaceted effects on the future of business. We encourage other researchers to investigate further.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Huan Kuang, Assistant Professor of Finance, Bryant University and Ying (Cathy) Zheng, Associate Professor of Finance, Bryant University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.