Alicanto
474640 Alicanto is a detached extreme trans-Neptunian object. It was discovered on 6 November 2004. On 14 May 2021, the object was named by the Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature after Alicanto from Chilean mythology.
China announces major gold discovery. The economic value of the country's largest single deposit of the precious metal is estimated at almost $28.5 billion. Getty Images / John W Banagan
Chinese state-run gold producer Shandong Gold Mining announced on Friday that its controlling shareholder had discovered an additional 200 tons of gold resources at the Xiling gold mine in Laizhou in Shandong Province in eastern China.
Sun (gold) conjunct Alicanto (named after Alicanto, a nocturnal bird in Chilean mythology) conjunct IC.
The discovery brings the total cumulative gold reserve of the mine to 580 tons, making it the country's largest deposit of the precious metal, with an estimated economic value of 200 billion yuan ($28.5 billion).
The Xiling gold mine is nearly 2,000 meters long and just over 2,000 meters wide, with a maximum thickness of 62.35 meters. The gold ore density averages 4.26 grams of gold per tonne. The deposit is estimated to be able to produce 10,000 tons of gold ore per day for the next 30 years.
Huge rare earth metals discovery in Arctic Sweden. Photo: BBC News
Europe's largest deposit of rare earths - which are used from mobile phones to missiles - has been found in Sweden.
Sun (chief ambitions ("Electrification, the EU's self-sufficiency and independence from Russia and China will begin in the mine") trine Alicanto (named after Alicanto, a nocturnal bird in Chilean mythology).
No rare earths are mined in Europe at the moment and a Swedish minister hailed the find as a way of reducing the EU's dependence on China.
Over one million tonnes are reported to have now been found in Sweden's far north.
German Steel Mill Malfunctions, Unleashes Flood of Molten Steel.
Here we have a wild glimpse of a mini-apocolypse unfolding inside the halls of the Saarstahl AG Steelworks steel mill in Volklingen, Germany.
Saturn (work, corporation (Saarstahl AG Steelworks steel mill in Volklingen)) square Alicanto (the bird runs on the ground and can't fly because of the weight of the ore it eats (massive overflow of molten steel)).
According to local newspapers hastily translated into semi-servicable english, the accident occurred due to a technical defect in the ladle slide (the "bucket" you can see overflowing with molten steel) that made it impossible to regulate the flow of steel into the ladle. This resulted in a massive overflow of the molten steel that ballooned out of control, leading to an immense flood of molten steel throughout the plant.
Discovery
2004 VN112/474640 Alicanto, provisionally designated 2004 VN112, is a detached extreme trans-Neptunian object. It was discovered on 6 November 2004, by American astronomer Andrew C. Becker at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. It never gets closer than 47 AU from the Sun (near the outer edge of the main Kuiper belt) and averages more than 300 AU from the Sun. Its large eccentricity strongly suggests that it was gravitationally scattered onto its current orbit. Because it is, like all detached objects, outside the current gravitational influence of Neptune, how it came to have this orbit cannot yet be explained. It was named after Alicanto, a nocturnal bird in Chilean mythology.
The Alicanto is a mythological nocturnal bird of the desert of Atacama, pertaining to Chilean mythology. Legend says that the alicanto's wings shine at night with beautiful, metallic colors, and their eyes emit strange lights. The color of the wings may indicate the type of ore it eats, golden if from a gold mine and silvery if from a silver mine. Some descriptions also portray the color of the wings as copper-green.
The bird runs on the ground and can't fly because of the weight of the ore it eats, this means that it runs faster if it hasn't eaten recently. According to legend, a miner that follows an alicanto without being noticed by the bird can find rich mineral outcrops or treasures such as an entierro. But if the Alicanto discovers that it's being followed it will turn off the shining of its wings, and scuttle away in the darkness of the night. Also, if the miner is not of "good heart" the alicanto will guide the miner off a cliff. Accordingly, the miner will not be able to see the cliff in time because of the "intensity of the darkness". It is said that it was an alicanto that guided Juan Godoy to the rich silver outcrops of Chanarcillo on May 16, 1832, sparking the Chilean silver rush.
