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Japanese researchers have mapped vast reserves of rare earth elements in deep-sea mud, enough to feed global demand on a "semi-infinite basis," according to a new study.
The deposit, found within Japan's exclusive economic zone waters, contains more than 16 million tons of the elements needed to build high-tech products ranging from mobile phones to electric vehicles, according to the study, released Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports.
[...] The finding extrapolates that a 2,500-sq. km region off the southern Japanese island should contain 16 million tons of the valuable elements, and "has the potential to supply these metals on a semi-infinite basis to the world," the study said.
The area reserves offer "great potential as ore deposits for some of the most critically important elements in modern society," it said.
The report said there were hundreds of years of reserves of most of the rare earths in the area surveyed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Wootery on Wednesday April 18 2018, @09:10AM
Yup. I could ramble at length about constructing correspondences, but I'll just quote Wolfram (emphasis mine): [wolfram.com]
The only place I've seen 'semi-infinite' used seriously is in discussion of Turing machines whose tapes extend infinitely in one direction, but have an 'end' (or if you prefer, a 'start'). [tutorialspoint.com] As you might have suspected, they have equivalent power to 'fully infinite' Turing machines, where there's no end to the tape no matter which way you move it.