Scientists at Boston's Northeastern University and UK's University of Cambridge have successfully created a metal called tetrataenite in a laboratory.

Previously found primarily in meteorites, the metal can be used in place of rare earth minerals in high end permanent magnets.

If the process proves to be commercially viable, within a decade we might see this substance replacing high earths in many but not all technologies.

Rare earth extraction is expensive, environmentally destructive and a market dominated by China.

They're also a key component in green energy technologies and with the world shifting in that direction, tetrataenite could make that conversion much cheaper.

The two material ingredients of tetrataenite are nickel and iron, both abundant on Earth, and there has only been one reported finding of its natural formation, in India.

So potentially a major discovery.

It's also interesting from the perspective of exploration.

This metal has remarkable, technological properties but formed in space under conditions which are extremely rare on our planet.

Articles about the material worth of nearby asteroids regularly talk about their value in terms of the base metals.

But in them and also possibly on other planets, moons etc. there could be undiscovered metals with remarkable and valuable properties.

[ Main Image: Tetrataenite. Credit: Robert M. Lavinsky, iRock.com via Wikimedia. ]

References

Hirsch, Paddy (November 8, 2022). They made a material that doesn't exist on Earth. That's only the start of the story. NPR.

Wikipedia. Tetrataenite. (viewed November 9, 2022)