Category Rare Earth Minerals

Neodymium, dysprosium, and the rare-earth magnets powering motors, robots, and clean-energy hardware.

Rare Earth Minerals, Critical Minerals, Future Tech

Rare Earth Magnets: Why the Modern World Runs on Them

Infographic illustrating rare earth magnet applications, including neodymium NdFeB and SmCo magnets in electric vehicles, wind turbines, robotics, defense systems, and data centers.

The Magnets the Future Runs On & the Country That Controls Them The strongest permanent magnet ever commercialised is a small slug of iron, boron, and a rare-earth metal called neodymium — and it is hiding inside almost everything that…

Joel Durant
July 20, 2026

Future Tech, Rare Earth Minerals, Silver

Metals in Humanoid Robots: Rare Earths to Battery Metals

A humanoid robot in a laboratory setting analyzing raw critical minerals and refined metals used in advanced robotics engineering, featuring digital display overlays highlighting rare earth elements and battery metals.

The Metals a Humanoid Robot Actually Runs On Strip a humanoid robot down to what makes it move and you find the same part repeated more than forty times: a small, powerful electric motor. Tesla’s Optimus carries on the order…

Joel Durant
July 19, 2026

Energy, Rare Earth Minerals

REBCO Superconductors: The Rare-Earth Tape Behind Fusion’s Magnets

A specialized winding machine in a laboratory spooling REBCO high-temperature superconductor tape into a large magnetic coil for a nuclear fusion project.

The 20-tesla magnets that could make compact fusion work are wound from REBCO — rare-earth barium copper oxide tape. Here's what it is, why a stronger field shrinks a reactor, how much tape a fusion plant needs, and the capital chasing it.

Joel Durant
July 18, 2026

Critical Minerals, Future Tech, Rare Earth Minerals

Phytomining: Can Plants Replace Rare-Earth Mines?

A phytomining test crop site with rows of yellow and purple hyperaccumulator plants next to a greenhouse, with an open-pit mine in the background.

The Fern That Grows Its Own Rare-Earth Ore On a weathered hillside in southern China, a scrambling fork fern called Dicranopteris linearis pulls rare earth elements out of the ground and packs them into its fronds until they make up…

Joel Durant
July 17, 2026