OT- Would make a great story line
 

This is very, very cool; almost as cool as the recent discovery about our oil reserves. If it bears fruit it might be a great step towards more manufacturing independence for the US. I certainly hope it's true.


As an aside, years ago on the Science Channel there was a bit about an open-pit gold mine out west where they'd made this massive soak field to remove the cyanide used to separate gold from other minerals from the water before they put it back in the ground. The gravity-fed filtration system was so efficient that the EPA told them they'd actually removed all the cyanide, including the micro-miniscule amounts that naturally occur in groundwater in that region...!

"Without rare earths we'd be back to having black-and-white cellphones again," said the USGS's Ridley.

Oh dear, the commuters who share the Tube with me every day would need to play their games in monochrome....As someone who is really irritated by my wife's Samsung whistling every time she gets a message - I could easily live with a return to a time when a mobile had a black and white screen and was just used to text or actually speak to someone (sorry, rant over...).