Rare earth metals are of increasing importance to humanity, as our batteries and other technological components are often made from these precious resources. Meaning, we are always on the lookout for new places to find them and they may have just found one.
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00:00Rare earth metals are of increasing importance to humanity, as our batteries and other technological
00:09components are often made from these precious resources.
00:12Meaning researchers are always on the lookout for new places to find them, and they may
00:16have just found one.
00:17Experts say that when volcanoes erupt, sometimes the magma which is brought up from deep underground
00:21is particularly good at gathering some of those very materials.
00:25However, the type of volcano and accompanying magma which they are looking for has never
00:29erupted in human history, meaning the researchers say we should be looking at extinct volcanoes
00:34for our sources of the iron-rich magma where the rare earth elements might be hiding.
00:38In fact, recently, the Karuna volcano in Sweden was announced as the biggest resource for
00:43rare earth metals in Europe.
00:44So scientists went to the lab to test this theory and see if the find was a fluke, essentially
00:49recreating a tiny volcano in a controlled setting.
00:52Finding that when they pressurized synthetic volcanic material and melted it at temperatures
00:57over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the iron-rich magma remained as tiny bubbles within the
01:01material.
01:02It then absorbed all of the rare earth elements around it, collecting them into deposits at
01:06densities 200 times greater than the rest of the magma, proving these extinct volcanoes
01:11could be active sources for these precious materials.