I expect most of the time is spent on getting financing, permitting, mineral rights, building needed infra, finding buyers for it, and also more testing on the size of the find and potential rate of extractions.
If anyone’s wondering why lithium is a somewhat-rare element (only 25th-most abundant in the Earth’s crust) in the first place—given that, by Big Bang nucleosynthesis, it “should” be the nearly as abundant in the universe as hydrogen or helium: we aren’t really sure! It’s an unresolved problem in physics:
(We do know that stars can “destroy” lithium baryons at high-enough temperatures, and that does explain part of lithium’s rarity. But even given that, it “should” still be 3x more abundant than it is; or rather, the Big Bang should have produced 3x more lithium than it did, given our current models of it.)
I didn't know Cornwall was a mining center. I thought, "I wonder if there are any good collections of old mining structures and machinery" and then found this [1]. Thanks, old internet! I hope you don't get killed by the walled gardens.
One definition of a mine was "a hole in the ground with a Cornishman at the bottom", and Cornish pasties were supposedly miners' lunch. See also the Camborne School of Mines.
Edit: s/is/was/ and hear Steve Knightley's song "Cousin Jack".
Yep, for 4,000 or so years! Cornish tin made its way into lots of Bronze Age goods. It’s amazing to me the extent of trade that long ago, where Cornish tin made its way into the Mediterranean and beyond.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 46.3 ms ] threadDoes this suggest that lithium rich brines could be found elsewhere as well and maybe in which environments they might be expected?
Why does it take half a decade to get going in such a case?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_lithium_problem
(We do know that stars can “destroy” lithium baryons at high-enough temperatures, and that does explain part of lithium’s rarity. But even given that, it “should” still be 3x more abundant than it is; or rather, the Big Bang should have produced 3x more lithium than it did, given our current models of it.)
[1] http://www.cornishmineimages.co.uk/
Edit: s/is/was/ and hear Steve Knightley's song "Cousin Jack".
Yep, for 4,000 or so years! Cornish tin made its way into lots of Bronze Age goods. It’s amazing to me the extent of trade that long ago, where Cornish tin made its way into the Mediterranean and beyond.