How cryptocurrency mining is hurting astronomers

Aaron Parsons is on a quest to discover the first stars that formed in our Universe around 13 billion years ago. But one thing is getting in the way of his primordial cosmic quest: cryptocurrency.
The mining craze of cryptocurrencies like Ethereum is draining the supplies of graphics cards on the market. And that’s spiking the prices of so-called graphics processing units, or GPUs, super powerful chips that can process huge amounts of data. Without GPUs, astronomers like Parsons can&rsquo