Rare earths are presently shaping talks on EV batteries, wind turbines and next-gen defence gear. Yet the public often confuse what “rare earths” actually are. These 17 elements seem ordinary, but they power the gadgets we carry daily. For decades they mocked chemists, remaining a riddle, until a quantum pioneer named Niels Bohr rewrote the r

You can’t scroll a tech blog without bumping into a mention of rare earths—vital to EVs, renewables and defence hardware—yet almost very few grasps their story. Seventeen little-known elements underwrite the tech that runs modern life. Their baffling chemistry had scientists scratching their heads for decades—until Niels Bohr entered the