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This space mining stuff

Certain newspapers need to catch up on the technical details:

contain as much gold, platinum and rare earth metals – such as rhodium

Rhodium isn\’t a rare earth metal. It\’s a platinum group metal.

3 thoughts on “This space mining stuff”

  1. Probably because if you point a journalist to a periodic table they will probably still giggle at the word ‘period’ in the name…

  2. There was some mong in the comments in the Torygraph saying that yttrium wasn’t a rare earth; that rare earths comprised lanthanides and actinides. I pointed out that uranium is not a rare earth and to stop being a prat.

    (conventionally, rare earths = lanthanides + Y + Sc. Seventeen elements in all.)

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