America gave up its rare earth edge. China took full advantage.
Look around you, and you’ll see rare earth elements at work.
A phone vibrates because a magnet moves a weight .
Its screen was polished with cerium powder.
Its connection to the rest of the world crosses oceans on cables amplified with erbium .
If you drove today, a rare earth magnet helped you steer, and a cerium compound scrubbed the exhaust .
All of these devices function because of 17 metals collectively known as rare earth elements .
The scientists who gave the group that name in 1794 created a misnomer.
Cerium alone is about as common in the Earth’s crust as copper.
However, separating rare earth minerals from one another and from raw ore is intensely difficult.
As a result, countries that control the processing of rare earth minerals have a lot of political leverage.
Read full article Comments
5News aggregated this summary from the outlet’s public feed. The full article, with all the context, is on arstechnica.com — the content belongs to Ars Technica.
