4 Rare Earth Elements That Will Only Get More Important  Lithium
is lionized. Silicon has a whole valley named after it. But what
about the silent heroes of modern technology? Rare earth
elements—a set of 17 related metals, mostly shunted off to a
tacked-on lower line of the periodic table—are crucial to the
way we live now; responsible for miniaturizing computers and
headphones, powering hybrid cars and more. The time has come to
get better acquainted with the molecules that make our modern
world run.   Back Next Photo courtesy of http://images-of-
elements.com/  Europium: Savior of the TV Generation  Sir
William Crookes, a 19th century British chemist, once wrote
that, "rare earth elements perplex us in our researches, baffle
us in our speculations and haunt us in our very dreams." These
weren't easy elements to isolate or to understand, and so there
was a very long lag time between the discovery of the rare
earths, and the discovery of practical uses for them.  It didn't
help that individual rare earth elem