Are Alien Powered Smartphones Coming to You?

In 1966 a group of French researchers made an astonishing discovery. A meteorite had fallen recently and contained small traces of a metal that had only recently been identified, tetrataenite. Tetrataenite is a strange sort of metal. Very tiny amounts have ever been found on planet earth, leading experts to believe whatever its origin, it doesn’t come from ‘around here’. It’s been noted that the pharaoh Tutankhamen was buried with a thirteen inch blade made from tetrataenite. This may sound fascinating and all, but what does this have to do with you and your phone? It appears that your phone, will soon by powered by this elusive space metal.

Let’s take a step back so that we can fully appreciate what’s going on. All of our phones are powered with what are called ‘rare earth metals’. As the name implies, phone batteries are produced by using metal mined from deep within the earth, and yes, they are quite rare. There are varying estimates, but with our current demand for smartphones, we will not be able to meet production demands within the next ten years.

That’s not all, there’s also monopolization to consider. Currently China dominates the world in rare earth mining, controlling 87% of the rare earth market. This gives China a major bargaining chip on the world stage, they can threaten to shut down a certain country access to their rare earth mining, causing disastrous effects on the global market. There’s nothing that anyone can do about this because China owns the worlds largest deposits.

Then, in 2022, everything changed. Tetrataenite had been found before, but in incredibly rare quantities. Usually from asteroids. What made this strange metal so enticing is that while its origins are unclear, it did have an identifiable structure comprised of nickel and iron. Prof. Lindsay Greer from the University of Cambridge has announced that he has found a way to synthesize the metal. It would be one thing if Prof. Greer had come up with a formula on paper, but that wasn’t the case. The Professor claimed that he and several colleagues had actually done it.

The ability to synthesize tetrataenite is astonishing and has the potential to change everything. Tetrataenite has all the properties of rare earth metals, meaning it can easily be implemented in everything from smartphone batteries to nuclear subs. The process Prof. Greer has discovered is actually fairly simple, several common minerals are superheated beyond their melting point, and thus tetrataenite is formed. What this means is that anyone with a decent sized budget like say, perhaps Apple, would be able to manufacture their own battery materials. Cutting China out of the equation.

Let’s be clear, so far no one has built a phone battery with tetrataenite. Yet. The point in that the potential now exists.  I seriously doubt that the next Samsung Galaxy phone will have tetrataenite in the battery. This is still a very new process. What Prof. Greer did is fascinating and revolutionary, but he synthesized a very small amount of the magnetic metal. Companies such as Apple or Samsung would want to synthesize tetrataenite on a mass scale. This is where things could get complicated very quickly. As of right now, no one know if attempting to synthesize mass amounts of tetrataenite would alter the makeup of the metal. There’s a lot of work to be done.