

No Shortage of Rare Earths, The "Great Acceleration"

Arthur Hanson

Active member
Just as semi technology is advancing, materials technology is advancing on several fronts, from new ways of mining, extracting and processing rare earths from byproducts of other mining and materials processing operations. Below is posted but one of many options. On top of this there are numerous ways of developing substitutes for many processes, which means any of the suppliers that try to restrict sales could have the process backfire on them and destroy their market. Actually the semiconductor sector has changed the whole economic world by making it possible through advanced lab equipment, processes and advanced data bases to create entirely new substitutes to existing methods to either obtain the needed materials or way to work around shortages of materials either real or man made. In short the semiconductor world has created a whole new world that can morph and change at such a rate that renders much of the traditional rules of almost anything obsolete or the power to do so in short order. AI/ML will only speed up this process dramatically by being able to look at blocks of data of staggering size to come to an answer to almost any challenge before us. The "Great Acceleration" is still picking up speed.