Following cadmium flows in grains and other plants by isotopic fractionation.

[NNadir]

3. I'll file this one with, um, the solar satellites beaming microwaves to Earth.

It's not going to happen. It is now, and always will be - since it takes energy to reach escape velocity, and the amount of energy is a function of mass - expensive to launch spacecraft.

Among the main applications for lanthanides are to make magnets for stupid wind turbines and stupid electric cars, neither of which are necessary or useful. We need to live with what we have, and in order to do that for all time, not just the relative microsecond in which we live, we need to understand that we need to do it, and then figure out how to do it.

Given that so much that is scientifically illiterate gains so much credence, I'm not overly optimistic that we are in any place to do that.

Filling the atmosphere with perchlorates and or their equivalents to launch rockets to race around the solar system to find lanthanides which will necessarily, be highly dilute ores since the absence of weather does not allow for element fractionation in most of space, is a fantasy, and the fact is, we are too willing to live in a fantasy world while our problems - the main one being our contempt for future generations - are real.

It will be criminal if we do not snap out of it.

We're stuck with this planet; a very rare planet from what we can tell; and the dream of escaping this planet to find another to trash is a very bad idea, in no way desirable and in no way realistic.