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Supplies of Rare Earth Elements Exhausted By 2017
tomhudson writes "While we bemoan the current oil crisis, I ran across an editorial that led me to research a more immediate threat. Ramped-up production of flat-panel displays means the material to make them will be 'extinct' by 2017. This goes for other electronics as well. Quoting: 'The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany's University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet's stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.' More links at the journal entry."
We still haven't even begun to use our Upsidasium supply.
Surely it will last us forever.
I just pooped your party.
*Tries to shoot self but fails due to gun not functioning without Zinc*
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
find a substitute
I hear Quake 5 for the abacus is going to be awesome!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Pennies are zinc.
Maybe that's another good reason to stop making pennies.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
actually vacuum tubes were depleting our reserves of vacuum. By the time they went out of use, there was no vacuum left on earth! Some proposed mining vacuum from deep space, but it wasn't practical.
So that's it then: we HAVE to go discover Rare Moon elements, Rare Mars elements, Rare Ganymede elements, ad infinitum...
It's all a cunning plan by NASA to stay employed!
(do I really NEED to put a '/sarc' after this?)
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
Food is becoming extinct as well. We're starting to burn everything we grow.
Most of the stuff on
I think they're good reasons to see pennies as a good investment.
ad infinitum
It's a good thing we have plenty of infinitum.
so you HAVE had my wife's cooking!
Some people are like slinkys. They're useless, but it puts a smile on your face to push them down the stairs.
*Points at silicon*
from TFA: "But we can't exactly set up a reservation somewhere where the supply of gallium and hafnium can quietly replenish itself."
Don't we have lots of Indium reservations throughout the American southwest? Why don't we, you know, just use that?
blah blah blah
The coming global depletion of supplies of Illudium Phosdex, the shaving cream atom, makes me angry, very angry. Without it, we cannot manufacture the Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator and civilization will crash. Damn you, Al Gore.
We'll just counter it by genetically engineering cows that fart backwards.
And in the history of mankind this has happened: NEVER!
Reminds me of the old joke about the guy falling off a building - as he sees floor after floor flash past, he keeps thinking, "So far, so good. So far, so good."
All joking aside, there have been situations where civilizations have collapsed because of resource shortages. Look at the Maya, for example. They had a civilization comparable to Rome, with far superior agricultural technology. However, when their population exceeded their ability to grow food, the entire civilization vanished in a paroxysm of war and famine.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Recycling is just part of the radical agenda to destroy America by making us drive smaller cars, which means smaller families which mean birth control which means the End of Christianity. I saw it on Fox News
Shame about Unobtainium, I can't seem to get it anywhere.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wouldn't it be more fair to say that it's not reasonable or economically feasible to mine metals off the moon today? It seems pretty pessimistic to assume that we won't be able to do it tomorrow, necessity being the mother of invention and all that...
It's pretty safe to assume it won't be feasible tomorrow either, with the approaching holiday and all that. Check back next week.
That and a whole lot more, thanks for asking.