In his New York Times bestseller, Abundance, XPrize and Singularity University founder Peter Diamandis tells the story of how aluminum went from a rare metal to something we wrap our food in.

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And some colleagues who intend to start producing 60 tonnes a year of a rare earth metal when then current market is perhaps 5.

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Neodymium is a rare earth metal used extensively to produce permanent magnets found in everything from computer hard disks and cell phones to wind turbines and cars.

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Exactly what is a rare earth metal is very slightly arguable, some would say it is only the lanthanides, lanthanum, cerium through to lutetium in that little box at the bottom of the periodic table.

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The newcomers will shrink China's market share by 15%, says Dudley Kingsnorth of IMCOA. The only existing producer outside Asia not dependent on Chinese ores is Silmet, a rare-metal firm in Estonia, which says it is now besieged by eager customers.

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The threads running through all of this are price and scarcity: a price to signal the relative scarcity of a good such as a rare-earth metal, and that relative scarcity in turn to stimulate innovation.

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Iridium is a metal which is rare in our planet's crust but more abundant in many asteroids and meteorites.

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This remarkably varied array offered a rare opportunity to compare and contrast how artists over the centuries used this metal, known for its malleability.

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Information provided by Metal Pages, a news site that focuses on non-ferrous metals, ferro alloys and rare earths, indicated that rare earth elements exports have dropped 65% in 2011 and that China has only exported 11, 000 metric tons of rare earths through the first three quarters of the year.

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