Earthly, yet oh, so rareĪs all of our readers will doubtless remember from their high school science classes, magnets are an essential component of any piece of machinery that runs on electricity: they are the conduit that transforms electric power into mechanical action. It could also roil the market in rare earths, currently dominated by China, and create a seismic shift in the industrial balance between China and the West. If synthetic tetrataenite works in industrial applications, it could make green energy technologies significantly cheaper. The compound is called tetrataenite, and the fact that scientists have found a way to make it in a lab is a huge deal.
That process created a unique compound with a particular set of characteristics that make it ideal for use in the high-end permanent magnets that are an essential component of a vast range of advanced machines, from electric vehicles to space shuttle turbines. We spoke to Laura Henderson Lewis, one of the professors on the Northeastern team, and she told us the material found in the meteorites is a combination of two base metals, nickel and iron, which were cooled over millions of years as meteoroids and asteroids tumbled through space. It - until now - has only been found in meteorites. Two teams of scientists - one at Northeastern University in Boston the other at the University of Cambridge in the UK - recently announced that they managed to manufacture, in a lab, a material that does not exist naturally on Earth. No aliens, for one thing ( unless you know something we don't). Best of all, the metal can be replicated, in a laboratory, using base materials. One day, scientists examining an alien meteorite discover a unique metal that negates the need for all that excavation and pollution.
It sounds like the plot of a science fiction movie: humans are destroying the Earth, gouging huge scars in its crust, and polluting the air and the ground as they mine and refine a key element essential for technological advance.
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