Rare earths are presently steering conversations on electric vehicles, wind turbines and next-gen defence gear. Yet most readers frequently mix up what “rare earths” really are. These 17 elements look ordinary, but they anchor the devices we hold daily. Their baffling chemistry had scientists scratching their heads for decades—until Niels Bo

You can’t scroll a tech blog without spotting a mention of rare earths—vital to EVs, renewables and defence hardware—yet almost nobody grasps their story. Seventeen little-known elements underwrite the tech that energises modern life. For decades they mocked chemists, remaining a riddle, until a quantum pioneer named Niels Bohr rewrote th