About 400 kilometers north-west of Sydney, south of Dabbo, is a large and interesting array of rocks, formed about 215 million years ago as a result of the eruption of volcanoes. This field is known as tungs and richly rare -earth elements: a set of 16 metal elements necessary for modern technologies - from electric vehicles to solar panels and mobile phones, writes Science Alert.

Currently, work is underway to develop this deposit, but the demand for rare -earth elements, according to scientists, will increase unimaginably in the next decades. To satisfy this demand, it is necessary to detect more deposits, and for this, according to scientists, it is important to understand how and why these deposits are formed.

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Recent studies of Australian scientists from universities in Adelaides and Queensland show that tiny crystals formed inside volcanoes give clues about the formation of deposits of rare -earth elements, and therefore scientists will be able to find them.

The formation of deposits of rare earth elements begins with a partial melting of the mantle of the Earth, which lies deep under the bark. In the mantle of our planet, minerals rich in iron and magnesium prevail, these minerals also contain a small number of other elements, including rare earth.

When the mantle melts, forming magma, rare earth elements easily move into magma. If the volume of melting is small, magma has a higher share of rare -earth elements, and vice versa. For example, in a medium-ocean ridge, where a huge amount of magma rushes to the surface and forms a new oceanic bark.

As Magma migrates to the surface of the planet, it cools and new minerals form in it. These minerals mainly consist of oxygen, silicon, calcium, aluminum, magnesium and iron. Thus, the remaining magma contains a higher concentration of rare -earth elements, and over time it will continue to rise through the bark until it hardens or erupted.

If magma cools and crystallizes in the bark, it can form rocks containing high levels of critical metals. One of the places where this happened is the Magmatic Complex of the Gardar in South Greenland, which contains several deposits of rare -earth elements.

In the central part of the new South Wales in Australia, Magma, enriched with rare -earth elements, erupted to the surface. They received the general geological name volcanic Svita Benolong. Within this region, there is a tung deposit, which is a part of an ancient volcanic plumbing system. In fact, this is the "

Scientists know so much about what happens at a depth of kilometers under our feet due to the breeds that break to the surface.

Fortunately, in many breeds of the volcanic retinue of Benolong there are clinopyroxen crystals, which allowed scientists to study the history of non -chief rocks and compare it with the mineralized tungy introduction.

The results indicate that the tungs breeds have two important differences:.

Scientists came to the conclusion that now they can track the composition and zonality of wedin pyroxen in other extinct volcanoes in Australia and abroad to find out which of them can accumulate the corresponding deposits of rare -earth elements.

Previously, Focus wrote that geologists found the "