Rare earths tend to come grouped together, with several present in the host rock—Mountain Pass’s bastnaesite ore contains fifteen of the seventeen rare earths, all but scandium and promethium—but they make up only a small fraction of that rock, and the concentrations vary widely. Mountain Pass’s rock is 7 to 8 percent rare earths, on … Read more

The number-one product we use rare earths to make is permanent magnets—components that convert movement into electricity, and electricity back into movement. Scientists began developing permanent magnets in the 1980s, when they figured out that adding a little bit of rare earth metals like neodymium and dysprosium to common metals like iron and boron produced … Read more

Rare earths are actually neither rare nor earths. Most of them are quite abundant, but they are almost never found in their pure form. Instead, they come dissipated in very low concentrations within other minerals, like grains of pepper in a meatball. That makes them difficult and expensive to separate out. Many of the rare … Read more