The findings could mean challenges to China’s monopoly over the so-called rare-earth metals, which are used for electric cars, flat-screen TVs, wind turbines and MP3 players.
China has one third of the world’s rare-earth reserves while another third are in former Soviet republics, the United States and Australia.
Research published in the journal Nature Geoscience by Japanese geologists suggests rich deposits of rare-earth minerals in samples taken from the central east and central north of the Pacific.
While lab tests showed the deposits could be removed by simply rinsing the mud with diluted acids, it is not known if the technology exists to recover the mud at depths of four to five kilometers below the surface of the ocean.
