New clues to the early Solar System from ancient meteorites

In order to understand Earth's earliest history--its formation from Solar System material into the present-day layering of metal core and mantle, and crust--scientists look to meteorites. New research from a team including ...

Extraterrestrial platinum was 'stirred' into the Earth

(PhysOrg.com) -- A research program aimed at using platinum as an exploration guide for nickel has for the first time been able to put a time scale on the planet’s large-scale convection processes.

Record high pressure squeezes secrets out of osmium

An international team of scientists led by the University of Bayreuth and with participation of DESY has created the highest static pressure ever achieved in a lab: Using a special high pressure device, the researchers investigated ...

page 1 from 2

Osmium

Osmium ( /ˈɒzmiəm/ oz-mee-əm) is a chemical element with the symbol Os and atomic number 76. Osmium is a hard, brittle, blue-gray or blue-black transition metal in the platinum family, and is the densest natural element. Osmium is twice as dense as lead. The density of osmium is 22.59 g/cm3, slightly greater than that of iridium, the second densest element. Osmium is found in nature as an alloy, mostly in platinum ores. Osmium is also used in alloys, with platinum, iridium and other platinum group metals. Those alloys are employed in fountain pen tips, electrical contacts and in other applications where extreme durability and hardness are needed.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA