Although mercury’s mystique held the promise of power, many of the ancients also knew it to be toxic. It was in the mining of the element where mercury first became associated with human illness beginning as tremors and progressing to severe mental derangement. The largest natural source of mercury is cinnabar, its only known ore, and the richest deposits are found in Spain and Italy. This reddish mineral containing mercury and sulfur has been used as a pigment since prehistoric times. Cinnabar dating from 500 BC has been identified at a Mayan site in Guatemala, and prehistoric skulls painted with cinnabar have been found in Italy.The Romans used their mercury mines as penal institutions for criminals, slaves, and other undesirables. The warders were among the first to recognize that there was a high likelihood that the prisoners would become poisoned and spare the keepers the need for formal executions. Mercury is primarily a neurological poison, causing tremors, extreme mood changes, and eventually loss of hearing and restricted vision. Certain forms of mercury poisoning also cause damage to the liver and kidneys. The life span of a worker in those mines was tragically brief.

In the 1980s Chinese researchers found that the soil in the burial mound above the tomb contains mercury concentrations way above those elsewhere in the vicinity. Now some archaeologists working on the site believe that the body of the First Emperor may indeed lie amidst vast puddles of the liquid metal.  Yet it seems unlikely that anyone will gaze on such a sight in the foreseeable future. ‘We have no current plan to open the chambers,’ explains archaeologist Qingbo Duan of Northwest University in Xi’an, who led the mausoleum excavations from 1998 to 2008. ‘We have no mature technologies and effective measures to protect the relics,’ he says. So can we ever know the truth about Qin Shi Huangdi’s rivers of mercury? 

Mercury – named after a Roman god known for speed and agility – is a chemical element that has fascinated humans for thousands of years. Mercury is the only metallic element that is liquid under standard conditions. It flows easily and has very high surface tension, so it forms shiny rounded beads. When compared with most other metal elements, which are usually bits of greyish solids that tarnish quickly, it’s easy to see why mercury was thought to have special properties.

The legendary First Emperor of unified China, Qin Shi Huang, began his reign at just 13 years old. Despite his youth, he began seriously preparing for his death by ordering the construction of a magnificent mausoleum measuring 6.3 square kilometres. It took approximately 38 years to complete, with an insane workforce of 700,000 prisoners, slaves, and other social outcasts.He wished to build a microcosm of his entire legacy on earth to take with him into the afterlife. This included 8,000 terracotta soldiers (horses and all), a palace, a pyramid, and a burial mound containing his tomb. This tomb has never been opened for several reasons. First, the air might damage whatever may lie inside. Second, it may contain toxic levels of mercury. 

Mer­cury is a heavy, sil­very and very tox­ic met­al. One of the most well-known fea­tures of mer­cury is that in nor­mal con­di­tions this met­al is liq­uid and only freezes at –38.8°C! In na­ture there are only two el­e­ments that are liq­uid in nor­mal con­di­tions – mer­cury and bromine.In the earth’s crust, mer­cury is a very rare el­e­ment, but rocks in which mer­cury is found usu­al­ly con­tain it in rather high con­cen­tra­tions. This is be­cause mer­cury mix­es poor­ly with el­e­ments that make up most of the earth’s crust, and so “ac­cu­mu­la­tions” of min­er­als con­tain­ing mer­cury are formed. The most abun­dant of them are cinnabar (mer­cury sul­fide HgS) and corderoit (Hg₃S₂­Cl₂).

The mercury market size is projected to increase by USD 695.42 million, at a CAGR of 2.94% between 2023 and 2028. The market report includes a comprehensive outlook on the market offering forecasts for the industry segmented by Application, which comprises electrical and electronics, measuring and controlling devices, dental application and gold processing. Additionally, it categorizes Product into metal, alloys and compounds and covers Region, including North America, APAC, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South America. The report provides market size, historical data spanning from 2018 to 2022, and future projections, all presented in terms of value in USD million for each of the mentioned segments.The growth of the market is propelled by the increase in the adoption of mercury in button cell batteries, although its progress is hindered by the stringent regulation on the emission and use of mercury. Furthermore, there is a notable upward trend in the increasing efforts to recycle and recover emissions of mercury. 

An online dump of classified Chinese documents from a private security contractor is shining a light on hacking efforts the country's spy agency uses on both foreigners and Chinese citizens. The leaked documents show how Chinese authorities deploy these tools to surveil dissidents overseas, hack other nations, and promote pro-Beijing narratives on social media. A menu of services revealed that $15,000 granted a local government in southwest China access to a traffic police website in Vietnam.Disinformation campaigns and account hacking on X cost $100,000 - and $278,000 got customers personal information from social media accounts like Telegram and Facebook.Meanwhile, Chinese police are investigating the hack of the security contractor, which is linked to the nation's top policing agency and other parts of its government.

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