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Making Magnets - The Geology of Neodymium · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
0:13
SPEAKER_03: Dr.
0:15
SPEAKER_03: Jesse Remink.
0:16
SPEAKER_03: How are we doing today?
0:17
SPEAKER_03: Hi, Christopher.
0:18
SPEAKER_03: How are we doing?
0:19
SPEAKER_03: Why are you laughing?
0:20
SPEAKER_03: I don't know, man.
0:21
SPEAKER_03: I've meant that in the most sincere way.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: I know.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: You're anything if not sincere, maybe 20% of the time.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: 20% of the time it works every time that you're sincere.
0:31
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I like that stat actually.
0:34
SPEAKER_03: Goodness.
0:34
SPEAKER_03: Hey, what's going on, man?
0:36
SPEAKER_03: Not a whole lot.
0:37
SPEAKER_03: It's been a really gloomy day.
0:39
SPEAKER_03: So I'm glad we're recording because I know it has been.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: It's like I woke up and it's just low-hanging clouds.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: My office in our building, in our uh in the geology building, is on the fourth floor.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I look out and I have a like a somewhat of a decent view.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: Like I kind of get a little angle of the mountains in Pennsylvania here.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: But man, I couldn't even see the the ridges in the distance.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: And they're not that far away.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Just low-hanging clouds.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't see the buildings downtown.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: It was just gloomy and spitting rain.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Brutal.
1:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:09
SPEAKER_03: Plus, you're you're sitting behind you.
1:11
SPEAKER_03: You look like you're in a hospital room, honestly.
1:13
SPEAKER_03: You have nothing.
1:14
SPEAKER_03: You need to do better with this.
1:15
SPEAKER_03: This is it depresses me looking at where you're sitting right now.
1:18
SPEAKER_03: You're sitting in a bedroom with what's wrong with my recording studio?
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay, just because I don't have a you know wood paneled recording studio in my basement.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, you you need like whiskey and cigar bar behind you there, Chris, to really fill in the picture.
1:34
SPEAKER_03: Actually, I yeah, actually, I do.
1:36
SPEAKER_03: First of all, it's not wood paneled, it's tongue and groove knotty pine.
1:39
SPEAKER_03: So don't downgrade me, please.
1:42
SPEAKER_03: Oh gosh.
1:44
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:44
SPEAKER_03: All right.
1:45
SPEAKER_03: Oh, goodness.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, we should probably get started here with some geology.
1:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, let's go.
1:49
SPEAKER_03: Let's go.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: What are we talking about today, Jesse?
1:51
SPEAKER_00: This is an episode that's near and dear to my heart, and you're gonna have to work really hard to keep me out of the week.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be chugging on you got the shot collar button, you know, and to buzz me back to reality here a little bit.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: Um we're talking about neodymium.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: And this is a word that people struggle to pronounce, but the way to pronounce it is just like it reads neodymium is the way to pronounce it.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: Yes, correct.
2:17
SPEAKER_03: Well, Jesse, give us the overarch.
2:20
SPEAKER_03: Why is this important, first of all?
2:21
SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, why?
2:23
SPEAKER_03: Well, you had to pitch me on this.
2:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, okay, let's do it.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Why?
2:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, why it's the great question, and the question we try and center ourselves around, right, Chris, is why?
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, neodymium is a really important element.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it's an element, it's what's called a rare earth element, and it falls into this category of minerals that's really important called critical minerals, which we consider really important for society.
2:48
SPEAKER_03: Um, and oh, hold on, let me interject real quick.
2:50
SPEAKER_03: Bring this back to Nadal Nassar, our interview with rare earth elements and the head of the USGS department that surrounds this idea, right?
3:01
SPEAKER_03: Like, go back to that interview.
3:03
SPEAKER_03: It is that I think is a must before you listen to this, don't you think?
3:07
SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, I agree.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: That interview, Nadal uh just has uh just an unbelievable insight and one of the coolest jobs.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: What he's an industrial ecologist, is what he called himself.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, totally cool.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: You can do whatever you want when you call yourself that, because who knows what that word means.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Like it's so interesting, though.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, absolutely.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Go back and listen to that.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: So, neodymium is important for our society, it is what makes strong magnets, and we use strong magnets all the time in every electric motor that is produced currently uses strong magnets.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: So that's the the sort of societal relevance of it.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: But also, neodymium is near and dear to my heart for research purposes.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: So we'll kind of end, I think, this episode with that.
3:47
SPEAKER_03: Okay, I want to get into that.
3:48
SPEAKER_03: Um, let's I'm just gonna give a rundown then today of what we're gonna do.
3:52
SPEAKER_03: Perfect.
3:52
SPEAKER_03: We are gonna start with the overview of the neodymium market, and we're gonna do this in two different contexts, okay?
4:00
SPEAKER_03: Why it's important for society and why it is important for geoscience research, which you just touched upon.
4:06
SPEAKER_03: Then we're gonna end by talking about the geology, because this is a geo podcast, the geology of neodymium.
4:13
SPEAKER_03: And by the way, neodymium is capital N D on the pure table.
4:19
SPEAKER_03: That's right, just for reference.
4:20
SPEAKER_03: So that's right.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And that's about it.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: Let's let's just dive right in.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: The uses of neodymium in society, and it really just boils down to the title of this episode, Making Magnets.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: And neodymium, Chris, I must admit, I don't really understand magnets.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how they make magnets.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't really kind of get how they work at a really deep physical level.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: But what I do know But they're fun.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: They're so fun and they're so cool.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: But the other the other thing I do know is that neodymium iron boron, also spelled the if you uh link together the elemental names, N D F E B magnets, are the strongest magnets we really know how to make efficiently as a society.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: So these are the strongest commercially available magnets at least.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: And we use magnets all the time in electric motors, yeah.
5:09
SPEAKER_03: Right.
5:09
SPEAKER_03: We use them in hybrid electric motors.
5:11
SPEAKER_03: I drive a Toyota Prius, it's in that.
5:14
SPEAKER_03: We'll talk about that in a little bit.
5:16
SPEAKER_03: Um, and Tesla uses this too, right?
5:18
SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is one of the things that makes the Tesla go so fast.
5:22
SPEAKER_03: So I have a question though, as I read what you wrote here for us has the technology evolved in the modern years and recent years with this?
5:32
SPEAKER_03: Like, what have we done to advance magnets to make these motors so much more efficient?
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Do you know?
5:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's really in the magnet side.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: I it to my understanding, these neodymium iron boron magnets have been around for a while, a couple decades at least.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: And really, the the efficiency driver that makes electrical vehicles um more efficient is actually the battery storage.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: So it's storing the power.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: And we can think, I think it's most useful, Chris, to think about this in reverse.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: So think about wind turbines.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Wind turbines use these types of magnets as well.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: So the way that electricity is generated is by spinning magnets inside of a coil of electrical wire, of copper wire, and that drives electrical current through the wire.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: So that's what's going on inside of a wind turbine is the magnets are spinning with the propeller blades.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: The propeller blades are spinning the magnets inside and it's generating electricity.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: The opposite happens with a motor.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: You drive current through the wire, and then you have a magnet sitting inside of that and it spins around.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: The magnet starts to spin inside of this circle of wire, basically.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a really dumbed-down version of it, but I think that helps visualize how magnets are used in all kinds of electric motors.
6:43
SPEAKER_03: So do they help it spin faster then?
6:45
SPEAKER_03: Is that what we're talking about?
6:47
SPEAKER_03: Efficiency of this rotation electromagnetic field.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Strong magnets would presumably like respond, you know, more to the same amount of electrical current and have more torque and provide more torque to the system.
6:59
SPEAKER_03: But I have to say that when I was, you know, a student, a young student in college, right?
7:05
SPEAKER_03: We have to go way back, right?
7:08
SPEAKER_03: Uh neodymium was not like this wasn't something that was talked about, right?
7:14
SPEAKER_03: This is relatively new.
7:16
SPEAKER_03: Do you do you know why that is?
7:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think the reason that that is is because, you know, in the stone age when you were in college, um the you know, we were there were no motors around everyone.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Um I got you.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: But in in seriously, in all seriousness, the the things have changed.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh internal combustion engines were what were driving torque in all the vehicles, right?
7:41
SPEAKER_00: In most of the motors in your yard, right?
7:44
SPEAKER_00: You're starting up your lawnmower and you're using gasoline.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: Start up your chainsaw using gasoline.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Now you can buy the electric ones, and those batteries, the batteries power this electric motor, and so we we have an electric motor sitting inside of there.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: So we're just using, we're just making more electric motors, so we need more neodymium.
8:02
SPEAKER_03: Okay, but I thought that so when I buy this, right?
8:05
SPEAKER_03: Because I'm doing this, I'm converting uh almost everything over to battery, right?
8:10
SPEAKER_03: I mean I have a uh battery operated snowblower right now.
8:14
SPEAKER_03: Oh, right.
8:15
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
8:15
SPEAKER_03: You know my driveway.
8:16
SPEAKER_03: Okay, my driveway is super long, so yeah, I'm not doing that with that.
8:20
SPEAKER_03: I I get it plowed, but I'm getting too old to do you know all the shoveling, and I I'm not gonna do that anymore.
8:26
SPEAKER_03: I'm past that stage of my life.
8:27
SPEAKER_03: So I bought a battery-powered snowblower, but it says lithium on it.
8:34
SPEAKER_03: So what's the backstory there?
8:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so okay, yeah, this is a great point, Chris.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: Go back to lithium, go back to our episode on lithium, the geology of lithium.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: We talk about that, and and that's making batteries.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: That lithium is where the charge is stored.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: The lithium-ion batteries are where we're storing electrical charge, and then the neodymium magnets, these neodymium iron boron magnets, which were invented again, sort of in the 80s.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, to answer your question, they might not have been really the most common magnet type in electrical motors when you were in high school and going through this system, but now they are.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: Now they're the most powerful magnet, and you have neodymium iron boron magnets probably sitting in your snowblower, uh, and then sitting in the you know, leaf blower that I have that's electric.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: And it's again lithium-ion batteries.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: So the lithium storing the charge, the neodymium is providing the motion as that charge goes.
9:28
SPEAKER_03: Jesse, yeah.
9:28
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna give you credit for this.
9:29
SPEAKER_03: Like, really, really well done.
9:32
SPEAKER_03: I didn't know where you were gonna go when I asked the question, but you really gave a good explanation.
9:37
SPEAKER_03: Seriously, I'm I'm being 100% serious.
9:39
SPEAKER_03: This is me giving you credit right now.
9:41
SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you.
9:41
SPEAKER_03: I appreciate it.
9:42
SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, yeah, I'll take it where I can get it.
9:44
SPEAKER_03: The lithium provides the power, but the motor is driven by the neodymium.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
9:51
SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's good, good, good, good.
9:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I actually am in the process of converting all of my tools and a lot of things that I never even thought about two years ago, even Jesse, yeah, to battery-powered stuff with different motors.
10:08
SPEAKER_03: My drills, my reciprocating saw, my chainsaw, my snowblower.
10:13
SPEAKER_03: My son has a lawnmower that is battery powered, it's and and therefore neodymium motor, right?
10:20
SPEAKER_03: And it's crazy how good this stuff is, but it's so awesome! Like the freedom of it.
10:26
SPEAKER_03: Oh shoot, I just forgot one.
10:28
SPEAKER_03: A leaf blower.
10:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, we just got done with this in the fall, and and it's it is just as powerful.
10:34
SPEAKER_03: My 40 amp leaf blower is just as powerful as my gas-powered one that I just sold on Facebook Marketplace.
10:42
SPEAKER_03: Like stuff is crazy.
10:43
SPEAKER_03: But Jenny, all she's got to do, my wife, she couldn't like she had a hard time always starting the thing.
10:48
SPEAKER_03: You didn't gotta choke it, you gotta take the choke off and all this stuff, right?
10:52
SPEAKER_03: And then you gotta deal with bad gas on a carburetor.
10:55
SPEAKER_03: She's like, I just want to push a button.
10:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like, yeah, totally.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: So there we go.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: You can do this.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so let me ask you this, Chris.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Have you gone sort of one brand where you have the interchangeable batteries you can use between them all?
11:08
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
11:09
SPEAKER_03: So this is a really interesting question.
11:11
SPEAKER_03: Um I we don't advertise yet on this show, but we don't.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: Um but Chris is going to right now, so no, I'm really I I don't know.
11:21
SPEAKER_03: Like for certain things, I really like Milwaukee because you know the the batteries are they're just they're so good.
11:29
SPEAKER_03: They're expensive, okay?
11:31
SPEAKER_03: But I really, really like the cobalt brand from Lowe's.
11:36
SPEAKER_03: It's much more affordable, and I just I think it's really, really good.
11:41
SPEAKER_03: And the thing is, is that it's if you get into like buying batteries, the batteries are mo almost as expensive as the device itself.
11:51
SPEAKER_03: And what I have found is with the Lowe's cobalt brand is that they sell the tool and the battery in certain packages together.
12:01
SPEAKER_03: So once you get into it, you like you kind of get roped in, you have to go with a certain brand because then you know, once I have a 40 volt battery, I can use that interchangeably with all of my tools that use that, right?
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: And then you got one charger and you got a bunch of different batteries that are interchangeable for sure.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh it's a smart strategy.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think I have a I think it's an ego, I think is it eargo?
12:26
SPEAKER_00: It's the green, yeah.
12:27
SPEAKER_03: Is it a lawnmower?
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I got a leaf blower.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: So I got a leaf blower with that.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: And then um, I actually just got for Christmas a um uh electric chainsaw, and I'm blanking on what the brand is.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to try that out because those little like I don't know, is a chainsaw gonna have the you know, really the torque to to do a lot, but they I'll give it a try.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: They actually do.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: Do they?
12:46
SPEAKER_03: Okay, they actually do, yeah.
12:48
SPEAKER_03: I could not believe the power of this battery-operated snowblower.
12:54
SPEAKER_03: I mean, uh so what tur what got me thinking about this is one of my friends, a professor, one of my college professors at Grand Valley, has a battery-operated rototiller.
13:03
SPEAKER_03: And I'm thinking, all right, what in the hell?
13:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's serious torque, right?
13:09
SPEAKER_03: And to do that, he can use it for 30 minutes on one battery.
13:13
SPEAKER_03: And that's like that's pretty amazing.
13:16
SPEAKER_03: Oh, totally.
13:17
SPEAKER_03: It's just like this is impressive.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: So let's let's kind of bring it back, Chris.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: That that leads us nicely back into the into the neodymium.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: But this is why you need a strong magnet, right?
13:26
SPEAKER_00: Is to provide that torque.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: You need a lot of current going through with a strong magnet.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: So that interaction between the electrical current spinning around and the magnet that wants to turn in there, you need to have a strong magnet so it gives more torque to the system.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why neodymium is really, really valuable at this current time.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to list a couple stats here.
13:44
SPEAKER_03: Jesse, can I interject a second?
13:46
SPEAKER_03: Um recently, well, I don't know, maybe recently, last couple years, Buckyballs made their presence in the movie.
13:53
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yes.
13:54
SPEAKER_03: Okay, because uh some kid swallowed 28, 28 buckyballs.
14:02
SPEAKER_03: And so I think well, first of all, so a buckyball is a really powerful magnet.
14:08
SPEAKER_03: I don't Jesse, do you know why they called them buckyballs?
14:10
SPEAKER_03: Like, what did they do?
14:10
SPEAKER_03: No, I have no idea actually.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: It might be some structural thing, but these are these little tiny like magnet balls that you can put together in a grid, they're super strong.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: You put them on like other sides of the table and they'll attract together and smash together.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: They're super, super strong.
14:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
14:25
SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry, that was a random thought.
14:27
SPEAKER_03: But they, you know, I think they ended up banning buckyballs because kids kept swallowing them, you know, and they're just these are really strong.
14:36
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
14:36
SPEAKER_03: You know, neodymium magnets, right?
14:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean it's neodymium magnets are found in MRI machines.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Actually, the United States F-35 fighter apparently contains 427 kilograms, Chris.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: Kilograms of rare earth elements, of which neodymium will be the biggest one, probably the most of the rare earth elements.
14:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
14:58
SPEAKER_03: For our American listeners, uh, a kilogram is approximately 2.2 pounds, just puts it in perspective.
15:05
SPEAKER_03: Like, it's a lot.
15:06
SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
15:06
SPEAKER_03: A lot, a lot, a lot.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean, so the and I just think to highlight this, you know, like the fact that wind turbines have these, water turbines have these magnets, like a lot of the green economy is based on these super strong magnets, either extracting energy, extracting electricity from like wind and stuff like that, or converting that electricity into power, like we talked about in all of our appliances, Chris.
15:32
SPEAKER_03: So which is really changing our lives, though.
15:34
SPEAKER_03: It has changed my life.
15:36
SPEAKER_03: Um like I have I've sold more of my old tools on Facebook Marketplace in the last two years than I ever would have imagined.
15:45
SPEAKER_03: Seriously, I'm I'm trying to go totally to this direction because the convenience of it is absolutely life-changing, it's amazing.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: For sure.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: And then if you have green power coming into your grid, you know, it it's better as well to just use that green power and dump the uh electricity into your little Milwaukee battery and then go around blowing the snow off your driveway.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: It's great.
16:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's one of my son's dreams.
16:10
SPEAKER_03: Um, he put solar panels on his house in Virginia, and he wants to buy a Tesla then down the road as well.
16:17
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, there you go.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: With totally green energy.
16:20
SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, absolutely.
16:20
SPEAKER_03: Hey, one thing too.
16:22
SPEAKER_03: Again, and this makes me think of the Nadal Nasar interview that we did last April.
16:28
SPEAKER_03: China currently supplies about 85% of the world's neodymium.
16:34
SPEAKER_03: And they do this from about one or two locations, and we're talking worldwide, right?
16:39
SPEAKER_03: So that's a an amazing stat, first of all, I think, if you digest that.
16:45
SPEAKER_03: And then also it's a scary stat.
16:47
SPEAKER_03: Like that uh that scares the hell out of me in terms of you know, supply chain issues.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: Any time that most of the world supply comes from one or two places in one or two countries, it's a not a stable supply chain.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: And that goes back to the critical part of neodymium being a critical element or a critical mineral, is that we gotta worry about the supply chain.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: We gotta like it might not be that stable.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it might not be only up to the the um supply-demand processes here.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, there are other forces at play.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: So I think Chris, that should we go into the geology of neodymium and then talk about the scientific uh uses of neodymium?
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Because I think the geology kind of sets the stage a little bit.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Is is that okay?
17:29
SPEAKER_03: I think that's a good plan.
17:30
SPEAKER_03: That's a good plan.
17:32
SPEAKER_03: I gotta say, uh this is your territory, okay?
17:39
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
17:39
SPEAKER_03: Uh holy crap, you are you're really nerding on me here.
17:45
SPEAKER_03: Um sorry, but I but I do love this stuff, honestly.
17:50
SPEAKER_03: My knowledge is uh a little limited here.
17:52
SPEAKER_03: I can contribute, but you're definitely carrying this part of it for sure.
17:56
SPEAKER_03: So let's put it this way, Chris.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: I've spent the last uh about eight years of my life studying neodymium where it is in the earth a bit.
18:04
SPEAKER_03: So Okay, that's that you know what I I actually actually did not know that you just I did not know that until just this second.
18:13
SPEAKER_03: We don't we don't have that very often where I don't know something about you and you don't know something about me.
18:19
SPEAKER_03: So that's true.
18:20
SPEAKER_03: That's true.
18:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I get you.
18:22
SPEAKER_03: So Jesse, neodymium is a rare earth element, it's like ridiculously small in the in terms of the total earth, it's about 400 parts per billion.
18:35
SPEAKER_03: So that means out of a billion atoms, 400 of them out of a billion, this is ridiculously small, are gonna be neodymium.
18:46
SPEAKER_03: And it is also a lithophile.
18:49
SPEAKER_03: And this this reminds me of something because back when we talked about um were we talking about iridium?
18:56
SPEAKER_03: I think we're talking about iridium, weren't we?
18:58
SPEAKER_03: And you said that iridium is a siderophile, and I like that term, and I asked you to call me sidero because it means iron-loving, and you know, I'm I think of myself as like iron hardened iron, you know, which you Yes, we've not done that, which is very disappointing.
19:16
SPEAKER_03: As in steel is forged.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so go ahead.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
19:20
SPEAKER_03: I know, I know.
19:21
SPEAKER_03: So anyway, can I ask the question, please?
19:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, sorry.
19:24
SPEAKER_03: Couldn't I interrupt me?
19:25
SPEAKER_03: So uh it it is a lithophile, litho, which I I get this, which means that it likes silicates, and litho is the lithosphere, so which means that it has to love the very outer part of the earth, right?
19:44
SPEAKER_03: Is that right?
19:45
SPEAKER_03: Is that good?
19:45
SPEAKER_03: Right.
19:46
SPEAKER_03: Yes, okay, exactly.
19:47
SPEAKER_03: Go.
19:48
SPEAKER_03: All right, I'm unleashing you.
19:49
SPEAKER_03: So go.
19:49
SPEAKER_03: So was that a question?
19:51
SPEAKER_03: Well, no, it really wasn't.
19:53
SPEAKER_03: Um Okay, all right.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: Can I let me can I back up?
19:56
SPEAKER_00: I got I got you.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Can I back up really quickly, Chris?
19:58
SPEAKER_00: I just want to back up to rare earth elements really quickly because I just want to set the stage for where we are in the periodic table.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: So the rare earth elements are a suite of elements that are at the bottom of the periodic table.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: So they're that kind of there's two rows of the periodic table that are often like pulled out and pasted at the bottom of the periodic table.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: And uh that's where neodymium resides.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of on the left side of the top bar of those elements down at the bottom, called the rare earth elements.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: So it is one of like 13 or 14 rare earth elements there.
20:28
SPEAKER_03: Can I ask you a question a minute?
20:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:30
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna interrupt you.
20:31
SPEAKER_03: So back in the day when I was in college, those little pasted things at the bottom of the periodic table, we never paid any attention to that at all.
20:39
SPEAKER_03: Not now, like everybody does, right?
20:41
SPEAKER_03: Did you, when you were a beginning young student, did you pay attention to those at all?
20:45
SPEAKER_03: Or this or is it newer than that?
20:47
SPEAKER_00: No, I would say it's I don't know if it's newer than that.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: It's just not introductory level stuff.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: Like this, I I think I we probably should have said this at the beginning.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: This is going to be a deep dive into isotope geochemistry.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go into like graduate level isotope geochemistry here, if I have my way.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: So this is not something you will find in a basic geology course or on our you know, Camp Geo platform, for instance.
21:11
SPEAKER_03: You're not by the way, Jesse, I did catch the the Snide remark you made there.
21:15
SPEAKER_03: No, this is on it's on it's not gonna be an introductory level.
21:20
SPEAKER_03: So you're saying that all of my chemistry education was done at an intro level of more than a little bit.
21:29
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
21:29
SPEAKER_03: For all of you listeners that are like you know, minors and maybe you know, lower majors in chemistry, Jesse just said, you don't know anything.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: No, Chris, I think if you listen carefully, I put my own education in that category.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: I didn't learn this stuff about neodymium until I was well in my PhD, well on my way to my PhD.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh so this is not intro level stuff, and I didn't get it in intro level uh classes either.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: So, okay, the question, I believe, was something about lithophile, and then you had and but mostly about do I call you CiderO I think was really your question.
22:05
SPEAKER_03: Okay that's not the question.
22:06
SPEAKER_03: My question is actually this is a lithophile or is neodymium is this like compatible with the deeper parts of the earth like the liquid outer core and the inner core is that a thing or not?
22:20
SPEAKER_03: Because we said that that siderole is that's why it went there right and this is different.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right Chris so lithophile literally means rock lover and rock in our world in our planet means silicates.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: Iron or metal iron lover siderophile so any element that likes bonding with iron will be in the core.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: And you brought up iridium uh platinum there's a whole bunch of different metals that love bonding with iron that'll be in the core instead of the mantle.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: So when the earth initially differentiated we had an episode on how to build a planet a while back where we talked about when the core formed uh when the core formed neodymium did not go into the core it stayed in the mantle in the silicate part the litho silicate rocky part of the planet okay I get you so actually now I want to change I don't want to be called Sidero anymore I want to be called litho because I am the rock lover.
23:13
SPEAKER_03: So can you do that?
23:15
SPEAKER_00: You can call me litho because there is no human on this planet who is more lithophile than you are.
23:22
SPEAKER_03: You are the most lithophile we need t-shirts Chris is the most lithophile that is a really good idea by the way I love t-shirts I do and I love t-shirts that are clever so I am going to do something with that.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Let me go with this then I have another question for you then okay so it gets concentrated in the crust then is what you said right so far we've gotten concentrated in the silicate part it's not in the core it's in the mantle and above yep right so okay like what kind of parts per million are we talking about here we said 400 overall 400 parts per billion what is it like in the crust then it's got to be much higher because it's litho exactly it's 1.5 parts per million now in Earth's mantle so there's if you take that 400 parts per billion that's the total earth but there's basically none in the core so that means it's concentrated in the silicate part in the mantle it's like 1.5 parts per million and then in the continental crust we have the mantle we melt the mantle to form basaltic oceanic crust we melt the basaltic oceanic crust to form continental crust in the continental crust it's 27 parts per million and that's a substantial amount more than 400 parts per billion what 400 parts per billion is 0.4 parts per million so 27 is a lot more than 0.4 is this then because we've talked about this before in previous episodes is this just differentiation of exactly exactly Chris exactly and the key here is that neodymium when it's in the mantle it likes being in silicates more than in metal so it likes silicates more than iron uh but once it's in silicates it would it doesn't really love being in silicates it would just rather be there than in iron.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: In fact when silicates melt it would rather be in the melt than in the mineral.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: So the nadium goes in the melt during all these partial melting processes.
25:17
SPEAKER_03: Gotcha it just doesn't have a choice at the when it comes down to the end it doesn't have a choice because that's the colder part of the earth and that's where it goes um I just want to for our listeners again uh terminology wise silicates when Jesse and I refer to silicates we're talking about minerals like quartz and feldspar hornblende biotite augite you know the pyroxines okay olivines those are the silicates that we're talking about so we're talking about very common minerals in other words right yes that are fundamentally built on silicon and oxygen bonds one other question then for you okay what happens because earth goes through has at least in the early part of earth history has been melted or resurfaced so what happens then to like neodymium every guess I mean like yeah I I mean every time the earth melts neodymium gets enriched in the molten part so you know the mantle is partially melting to form oceanic crust 15 to 20% partial melt in that 15 to 20% most of the neodymium goes in there which means the oceanic crust has more neodymium in it.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: So every time the earth melts this neodymium gets enriched in the melt phase.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: So it is exactly exactly what you said Chris it is this distillation process.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: Neodymium is being distilled every time the earth melts cool all right I get it I I get it.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: So Chris I think it's now time to sort of bring in these weird minerals and rare earth elements I mean you described this really well that uh when we talked about pegmatites that all the elements that don't fit the misfits they all get together and form random minerals that are not common minerals they're not biotite or quartz or amphibole they're the weird ones and there are weird minerals that are made up of rare earth elements plus some anion some other part and so we have rare thalmate phosphates which is a mineral called monazite this is a rare thalmate phosphate it's fairly common I mean it's not that common it's occurs at like fractions of a percentage of a rock but it occurs in a bunch of different rocks we actually date this in our lab um you know gem quality monazite is not the prettiest mineral actually um you know it's it's not that interesting it's very useful for science because it has uranium and no leads you can date the uranium lead system but there are other rare thelmate mineral groups um so for instance like what other ones might contain rare thalmates Chris oh well actually I want to jump back to something that you said so mazite is a phosphate I want to define what that means it's PO4 three negative minerals are put into groups according to the dominant anion that's present phosphates are one of those it's PO4 sulfates are another one that's SO4 silicates is another one and that's SiO4.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: So it's that dominant anion that allows us to categorize the mineral groups and there are only you know I'm gonna say two handfuls of mineral groups that exist on at least in the crust okay so I just I don't know I just thought I would interrupt no that that's exactly right Chris so monazite is a rare earth element plus three charge plus a PO4 minus three charge bonded together that's a neutral bond great that can make a mineral so they build a mineral out of that and that's uh monazite and that is actually mined in some of these places you can have monazite sand it's a pretty heavy mineral it's like zircon uh in the erosion process it can be concentrated in certain locations and so you can get monazite sand that can be economical to mine for neodymium or for rare earth elements.
29:04
SPEAKER_03: All right so I have another question for you appetite a mineral that I love appetite to me looks like a green jolly rancher like one of those sour apple jolly ranchers.
29:16
SPEAKER_03: That's how I think of it.
29:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah is that right yeah that's right I think it works it has a decent amount of rare earth elements but not as much as monazite I love appetite um I have a question for you before like you can talk a little bit about appetite not much and then I want to get to my next question for you but I took appetite out of my mineral sets for my geology students is that a good call or should I put it back in good call you would never have it in your class because you don't have time for that.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: No no no no I mean we cover only the basic rock forming minerals to 10.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah appetite I I would say good I mean it's rare people have to identify appetite even if they're working in any industry.
30:03
SPEAKER_03: Okay so that's beside the point.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's good to take it out Chris but it you know it it's not really an economic deposit of rare thalmints but it does have it in there.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: So appetite is you know basically your teeth I mean it's the same compound as your teeth but natural rock forming appetite will take it'll suck up some of the rare thalmints that don't fit in the other minerals in a rock.
30:22
SPEAKER_03: The most important mineral perhaps for rare thalmints is one called Hold on can I try to no no no no I want to try to pronounce this can you not do that?
30:30
SPEAKER_03: Alright so like don't step on my toes um I've never heard of this mineral before but I did watch a 60 minutes episode on the mountain pass mine.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Um and I don't think they mentioned the mineral anyway probably because it's impossible to pronounce I'm looking at it is it bast nasite bast nasite bass nasite I've heard it pronounced bass nasite which sounds bass nascite bast nastoite I mean there's various pronunciations but um there's an oonlaut in there you know it's a very interesting oh there is okay well I think I mean I typed this into our script so I didn't have the unlaut character on my keyboard but yeah I think there's an unlaut somewhere in there but this is a basically a rareethelmic carbonate.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: So it's has some cesium in there but it's a rareethelmic carbonate has some OH groups and fluorine on the backside but it's a carbonate and this is the one that the Mountain Pass mine in California which was going to shut down I think it did shut down for a while production now it might be back up and running with the the um build back better initiative I'm not really sure uh but it contains something like eight to twelve percent of the rock is rare thalmant oxide like really hyper concentrated rare thelmant oxides in here okay a massive amount of rare it's also kind of a controversial mine if I very controversial yeah uh I mean like most mines um and so I I think you know basnacite is a mineral basnacite is a mineral that is uh really if you're sort of researching neodymium and rare earth elements it's a mineral that people care about and are looking to mine because it's so highly concentrated I just want to talk about one last thing Chris is that when it comes to mining neodymium or prospecting you're not looking for just neodymium like neodymium never occurs by itself it occurs with all the other rare earth elements like they occur together as a cohort and we're after neodymium and so a lot of the economic calculations that go into deciding hey is this going to be a mine depend not only on neodymium but they also depend on the price of cerium the price of summerum like the market value of the other rare earth elements in that particular mineral so it gets really really complicated to forecast profits and losses in lifetime of a mine when it comes to this rare earth element stuff because they all occur as a group together so we're able to separate the cerium from the neodymium and all of the stuff using chemical processes.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: Yes but it is much more difficult to separate neodymium a rare thalmate from its neighboring rare thalmant samarium or cerium because they're so similar chemically they occur together in rocks because they're so similar chemically whereas gold is relatively easy to separate from iron because they're very different elements it would maybe be like separating azurite from malachite from Cursicola copper oxides and so all copper stuff yep for sure for sure so it becomes quite difficult to separate them.
33:35
SPEAKER_03: Wow interesting okay Jesse doctor hi this brings us to the last part of this episode which are the scientific uses for neodymium for research and this is your rabbit hole so we don't have a lot of time though hold on stop for the next two and a half hours we got two and a half hours right for this we don't have a lot of time we're already running a little long in the tooth so we gotta cut this down right give us a rundown on this and I'm just gonna I'm gonna play host here okay this is my job.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay all right so we've talked about uranium lead and various radiometric dating systems right yeah okay that's uranium decaying to lead okay that's exactly right and the ratio of uranium to lead gives us the age we can use that and that's a clock right now samarium is a rare thalmant SM is a rare thelmet it occurs very close to neodymium in the periodic table and samarium decays to neodymium so 147 the isotope 147 samarium decays to the isotope 143 neodymium and it decays is that two alphas that is one alpha one alpha decay one four seven to one for that's the atomic mass there.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: Yep okay so one alpha decay has a half life of about 106 billion years which is extremely long which means that for our purposes our four and a half billion years of earth history this is a straight line like the exponential decay is just a straight line okay so why do we care about this?
35:16
SPEAKER_00: Well first of all some people use this as a clock it works in specific instances to be a clock that that decay of 147 to 143 works like a clock.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: The bigger use is actually as an what we call an isotope tracer.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: And so let's say Chris I know the age of a rock and it's two and a half billion years old.
35:38
SPEAKER_03: That rock a magma crystallized two and a half billion years ago but I want to know what melted to form that rock so I have a granite so interject real quick you know that it's two and a half billion years old because of some other like uranium to lead decay method.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: You're not using samarium to neodymium you're using something else okay we're using something else yep either uranium lead or maybe samarium neodymium but we're using usually something else to determine the age two and a half billion years old it's a granite it's sitting there I want to know what melted what came before that granite what melted to form that granite was it oceanic crust was it the mantle and it the mantle fractionated to form this granite or was it some really really old the first crust on earth that melted to form that granite okay so that's kind of the question.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm not looking at the rock itself I'm looking at what came before it what was its parent and this is where samarium neodymium is really beneficial because samarium and neodymium have slightly different chemistries and so when the mantle melts this differentiation process you melt the mantle we have this partial melting 15% of the mantle melts and we form oceanic crust with that both samarium and neodymium want to go into the melt stage want to go into the magma but samarium wants to just a little bit less so more samarium stays behind than neodymium does.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: Fractionation exactly fractionation so the two elements are fractionated from one another a little bit too so what does that do over a long period of time the mantle has a can I give a crack at this yeah so it enriches neodymium and diminishes samarium relative to each other.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Exactly right like is that where you're going with it exactly where I'm going with that.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: So if we did this process four billion years ago the mantle melts and we form oceanic crust and we form a depleted mantle the mantle that has lost neodymium.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay you know where we're going with this Chris I get it I get it this is awesome all right so I want everybody to know like you were we did not really discuss this actually at all we didn't at all I didn't we may have never discussed this no we have not um I freaking love doing this podcast with you like I I know I said that but like this is super fun for me because I'm just watching you work over there and I'm watching your little brain work over there I love it um and I'm able to follow it like I you know yeah so what so let me let me I'm gonna turn the tables because you've been asking me this all episode so let's say that happened four billion years ago that oceanic crust what is it gonna look like two and a half billion years ago one and a half billion years later yeah so you're looking at ratios of samarium to neodymium to determine where it came from exactly that makes sense to me exactly so you're able to determine age using a different method probably probably not samarium to neodymium but you are using the ratio of the two to determine the parent essentially of where this stuff came from and that is oh my god that is freaking cool so I love that oh let's play this forward a little bit here just to kind of complete the cycle here if we think about that four billion years ago we have oceanic crust formed primary crust basaltic crust and we have a depleted mantle the mantle has slightly higher samarium to neodymium there's more samarium relative to neodymium than there was before in that mantle and in the crust conversely there's less samarium compared to neodymium so I told you initially that samarium decays to neodymium decays to 143 neodymium so the mantle is going to there's more samarium to neodymium in there.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: So 143 neodymium is going to grow more rapidly in the mantle than it is in the crust because the crust has less samarium compared to neodymium.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: So these two things even though they formed from the same mantle when they formed 4 billion years ago the crust if you think of a chart where 143 neodymium is on the y-axis the mantle is going to shoot up really quickly and the crust is going to kind of flatline and not increase very rapidly at all so if we fast forward to 2.5 billion years ago and one of those rocks melted to form a granite I can really easily tell the difference between a 4 billion year old mantle and a 4 billion year old piece of oceanic crust that could either one of those could have melted to form a two and a half billion year old rock it's kind of beautiful right like this this is what we call isotope tracing.
40:17
SPEAKER_03: It is I'm I'm tracking on you K I'm I'm able to follow you is there a way for you to like I'm only gonna give you a minute is there a way to like distill this down just a little bit I know Joyce is not following this my mom is she's she's napping right now.
40:34
SPEAKER_03: I'm able to follow but I gotta really like I I'm sitting on the edge of my seat right now okay like this is exciting and I think this is so freaking cool but I think we lost like a lot of people okay so let's um let's bring it home to something you really enjoy you like Skittles I do am I right my favorite you when you're driving that bus on summer science I know you always got a big old jar of Skittles sitting right next to you to keep you awake don't you I do I love Skittles okay that's best what's your favorite color Skittle Oh I I it's like picking a favorite kid I can't do that.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh come on give me something for the analogy here orange orange okay what's the least favorite purple purple all right so Chris orange and purple I'm gonna have green and yellow okay let's say you got your jar of Skittles there and you really love orange right and you really hate purple and so let's say you're sitting there you're driving the bus and over time you're eating these candies right you're kind of eating the ones you like and you don't you don't eat the ones you do like so let's say you're gonna take half of those if half your Skittles and you're gonna say all right I I don't want to eat the orange ones because I want to save them for later.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna put a bunch of the orange ones and okay I I didn't purely uh separate them so I'm gonna put orange and green and purple and a little bit of yellow in one of the bins and I'm gonna keep the other bin you know uh the one I'm eating out of actively here and you're gonna eat progressively eat the orange ones now leaving the purples behind right so that's kind of this sort of self-selection process.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: Now if that's that's the analogy if you're actively consuming these things.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: But let's say all of the orange ones turn to purple over time at some fixed rate like they decay away.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: Now your jar that you set somewhere where you artificially enriched that in orange ones and you kept the the your jar that you're actively eating out of has less orange ones in it.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: The orange ones are decaying to the purple ones but it's decaying a lot less you're producing less purple ones in your jar than the one you saved and tucked underneath your seat there's a lot more purple being produced in that one because you put your a bunch of orange ones in that jar and tucked it under your seat.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
42:48
SPEAKER_03: So by eating the orange ones at a faster rate I am enriching the purple ones left behind.
42:55
SPEAKER_03: And that's what's happening in the mantle correct that's right that's right.
42:59
SPEAKER_03: Yep okay yes and so by the way did I say that correctly like that's in the it's in the mantle right that it's enriched it's enriched in the mantle yes that's right yeah that's right yeah yeah the ratio the ratio is enriched in the mantle and Chris let me just so hold on let me hold not nope nope I gotta give you credit Jesse I ah I've said this too many times this episode but this has really been maybe one of the most like enlightening and fun episodes for me to do seriously and I mean that like this is really cool since maybe the nuclear reactors episode which if you don't remember that or didn't listen to it go back to that because that's one of the coolest factoids that that exists in in geology.
43:42
SPEAKER_03: But Jesse your analogy is spot on and your ability now to draw analogies Jesse is growing my young sage.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: Well I've learned from the best over the last couple years here.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: So Chris let me just tag one thing on here and maybe this you give me we You give me 30 seconds here?
44:01
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, but okay, we're getting long.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: So we've got to go.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: 30 seconds.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna add in to based on that nuclear reactor thing is that neodymium, this samarium-neodymium system, 147 samerium decays to 143 neodymium, half-life of 100 billion years.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: It's just like uranium-lead in that there is another system.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: There's a samarium to neodymium system that is the short-lived one.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: That's just like the short-lived uranium-lead.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: There's two isotopes of uranium that decayed to two isotopes of lead.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: There were two isotopes of samerium that decayed to two isotopes of neodymium.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: There was an isotope 146 samarium that decayed to 142 neodymium, and it had a half-life of 100 million years.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: So within the first 500 million years of Earth history, by 4 billion years ago, 146 samarium was dead.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: It was extinct.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: But what it does is we can go to rocks and we can look at 142 neodymium and we can tell if that rock's source, the parent to that rock, was formed in the Hadean, in the first 500 million years of Earth history.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: How cool is that?
45:05
SPEAKER_00: We can look at like a modern rock and say, hey, did the source to this rock form when Earth was a baby?
45:13
SPEAKER_00: That to me is just mind-blowingly cool.
45:16
SPEAKER_03: Alright.
45:18
SPEAKER_03: Frickin' cool.
45:20
SPEAKER_03: Alright.
45:21
SPEAKER_03: But some people, most of the people I think listening are lost on why.
45:27
SPEAKER_03: Why?
45:28
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: Good question.
45:30
SPEAKER_00: So, Chris, we've been doing this plate tectonics question series.
45:34
SPEAKER_00: And we're about three in, we might have two or three to go.
45:38
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember.
45:38
SPEAKER_00: But we are about to cover, if we haven't yet, when plate tectonics began on Earth.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: And we actually have no idea when well, we have some idea, but there's very little agreement on when plate tectonics started on Earth.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: And part of that question is when did continents grow on Earth?
45:53
SPEAKER_00: We don't really fundamentally understand when continents grew on Earth.
45:57
SPEAKER_00: And this system, this clock that we've just described, this tracer isotope system is great at tracing when continents grew on Earth.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: Or at least it's in a step in the right direction.
46:07
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of why we we sort of aren't interested here.
46:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
46:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
46:13
SPEAKER_00: Let's very quickly summarize here.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: We talked about neodymium.
46:15
SPEAKER_00: Needium is really important for society.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: Basically, we make strong magnets with neodymium, and that's really instrumental for the green economy and all of the electric motors that we have in our society.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: The geology of neodymium, it's enriched every time the planet melts.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: And then we have some of these really weird minerals, rare ethalmic phosphates and and rareothalmic carbonates that contained loads of rare thalmants that are actually the mineable resources.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: And then we ended with a not too short summary of a graduate level crash course on the isotope geochemistry of neodymium and why it's useful for science.
46:51
SPEAKER_00: So that's uh that's kind of a summary.
46:54
SPEAKER_03: So, Jesse, this was a lot of fun for me.
46:58
SPEAKER_03: This last hour of you and I talking, like I um I don't know, I feel invigorated.
47:06
SPEAKER_03: I learned a ton, I kept up for the most part, you know.
47:11
SPEAKER_03: You are definitely the doctor in the house here, and I love that about this.
47:17
SPEAKER_03: We bring such different things to this podcast, and you brought it today.
47:22
SPEAKER_03: You wrote this script, and I read it.
47:25
SPEAKER_03: All I did was read it, and I had no really you know, we just kind of freeballed this thing.
47:32
SPEAKER_03: We didn't rehearse what we were gonna say at all, which we hardly ever do anyway, but this was mentally very stimulating for me and just like fun.
47:43
SPEAKER_03: Like this reminds me of why I want to do this with you.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I mean, I it's great.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm happy to hear that.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: That it was super fun.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that you know, like I said, this is the last eight years of my life.
47:56
SPEAKER_00: I've been studying this a lot in detail.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: So um, near and dear to my heart.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's I'm glad it's not boring.
48:03
SPEAKER_03: Well, anyway.
48:04
SPEAKER_03: I yeah, no, it's not boring at all.
48:06
SPEAKER_03: I I hope that we didn't lose a lot of people along the way.
48:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think you did a good job keeping me out of the weeds and keeping me struck in here.
48:14
SPEAKER_03: Pointing out the air.
48:15
SPEAKER_03: I tried my best, but sometimes I get pulled into the weeds, you know.
48:18
SPEAKER_03: Like it's it's not easy for me to like stay out of that because I get sucked in by things that you say, and then I'm like, my mind goes, you know, when I'm yeah, totally I don't know how to stop that.
48:28
SPEAKER_03: So, but I don't want to stop it.
48:30
SPEAKER_00: Let's put it out there because um if you have questions about ne Demium, the geology of neodymium, send us an email.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: Please send us an email, planetgeocast at gmail.com.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: We love hearing those questions, and we promise we will get to them eventually, even if we don't right away.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: So shoot us an email, reach out on social media.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: We're at Planet Geocast on all the social medias.
48:49
SPEAKER_00: You can visit our website, planetgeocast.com.
48:52
SPEAKER_00: Go to Campgeo if you want the basics.
48:54
SPEAKER_00: This is very in the weeds, this discussion here.
48:57
SPEAKER_00: If you want to go back to basics a little bit, go to Campgeo, college level physical geology class, intro level class right there for you.
49:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, the link is in the show notes.
49:06
SPEAKER_03: It's at the top of the show notes.
49:07
SPEAKER_03: And please share our podcast, it really helps us out and we enjoy that.
49:12
SPEAKER_03: So please share.
49:13
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
49:14
SPEAKER_00: Leave us a rating review and uh go to our website.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: Cheers.