The race to make the world's strongest magnet (CNN)

[eppur_se_muova]

By John D. Sutter, CNN
March 9, 2011 2:41 p.m. EST | Filed under: Innovation

(CNN) -- George Hadjipanayis' assistant came to him with perplexing news: Some incredibly strong magnetic field had caused their lab instruments to go haywire.

"You're out of your mind," Hadjipanayis recalls telling him in the early 1980s. "You have something wrong; go back" and try the experiment again.

Nothing was wrong, though, and Hadjipanayis soon realized that his team accidentally had created what was then, and continues to be, the world's strongest magnet -- made of a strange and little understood "rare earth" element called neodymium. That magnet would help revolutionize technology, powering wind turbine motors and giving juice to electric cars.

But the luck wouldn't last.

Accessible supplies of neodymium and 16 other rare earth elements -- which occupy those two orphaned rows at the bottom of the periodic table -- are running short. China, which controls supplies of 97% of these materials, doesn't like sharing them with the West. And the only U.S. mine for rare earth elements went out of production after a radioactive waste accident in the 1990s.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/03/09/rare.earth.magnet.race/index.html#




Not really good for technical details (hey, it's CNN!) but emphasizes why this research is important for both business and the environment.