A simple one-step process recovers more than 90% of rare earth elements (REEs) from magnets ( Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2025, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2507819122).

The rise of the Iron Age —and the complete shift in the way the world worked that it caused—was likely an accident. And according to new research, a copper smelting site used roughly 3,000 years ago ...

New research suggests ancient copper smelters accidentally discovered iron, sparking the technological shift that transformed human history.

Elements used to make magnets have become a bargaining chip in the U.S. trade war with China. A Minnesota company is trying to replace rare-earth magnets.

Iron and its alloys, such as steel and cast iron, dominate the modern world, and there's growing demand for iron-derived products. Traditionally, blast furnaces transform iron ore into purified ...

Copper smelters once used iron oxide to refine copper, unintentionally advancing the path toward iron metallurgy. Research conducted at Cranfield University provides new insight into the shift from ...

The story begins at Kvemo Bolnisi, a smelting workshop perched on a hillside in the Caucasus. Soviet archaeologists first dug it up in the 1950s and immediately declared it one of the earliest iron ...

A group of researchers, comprising James Tour and Shichen Xu from Rice University, has created a rapid, single-step technique for extracting rare earth elements (REEs) from used magnets.

What do magnets, smartphones and medical imaging devices have in common? They all depend on rare earth elements called lanthanides, which are vital for modern technology.

Niron Magnetics (Minneapolis, Minn.) has broken ground on a new state-of-the-art 1,500-ton-per-year permanent magnet manufacturing facility in Sartell, ...