Lake Mead is lower than it’s ever been, the result of decades of drought and warmer temperatures caused by climate change. The sinking water levels have revealed a different sort of catastrophe; layers of volcanic ash preserved in stone.

Dropping water levels in Lake Mead have revealed a number of interesting things, from sunken boats to bodies in barrels.

The past decade has seen a paradigm shift in the way the world looks at lighting. Homes, offices and streets have turned off wasteful incandescent lights and fluorescent ones that exposed users and the environment to toxic contamination.

Ramping up renewable energy products will require a range of critical metals. One of these elements, tellurium, is gaining in popularity for use in photovoltaics, or solar panels. As global demand for solar panels continues to increase, so is the need for critical metals like tellurium.

Yet another body has been unveiled by the shrinking drought-stricken Lake Mead, bringing the total to at least six skeletal remains as the nation’s largest reservoir continues to dwindle.

After a diver found what appeared to be a human bone in Lake Mead, the park searched the area and uncovered more human remains, the National Park Service confirmed Wednesday.

Idaho’s Cobalt Belt is a 34-mile-long desirable stretch of ore tucked under the Salmon River Mountains that’s considered “globally significant” by mining companies. And miners are interested in that cobalt: a hard, brittle metal used in electric vehicle batteries. On Oct. 7, Australia-based Jervois Global opened the only cobalt mine in the U.S. there to much fanfare.

There are many factors to consider regarding possible future human exploration on Mars. Unlike robotic equipment, such as a rover , a drone or a probe, a human being needs, just to say the basics, oxygen to breathe and food to eat. Not to mention the effects that such a long and unusual journey into deep space can have on an astronaut's body.

When most media discuss the materials critical to the energy transition, they focus on the big names: lithium, nickel, copper, sometimes a dash of aluminum or a hint of graphite. They can be forgiven for whizzing past indium, gallium, cadmium or tellurium, because mining companies often do as well. These elements are produced as byproducts of mines that aim for metals with bigger markets, like zinc or gold.

Leena Cycil, geochemist and team member on the Mars 2020 mission, believes that algae may be part of the "secret" to human survival on Mars. Together with Libby Hausrath, she studies extremophile algae and tries to grow them under pressure and luminosity conditions similar to those found on Mars . To date, three promising species have been identified.

Falling water levels in Lake Mead in the United States have brought out a number of shocking things in recent months – sunken boats, old warships and even human remains. Now, scientists have revealed a new discovery: rocks covered in volcanic ash that rained down on southern Nevada during eruptions that occurred about 12 million years ago.

While the world is marveling over the first images and data now coming from NASA’s Perseverance rover mission seeking signs of ancient microscopic life on Mars, a team of UNLV scientists is already hard at work on the next step: What if we could one day send humans to the Red Planet?