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.
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