Prompt Cast
The Rise of Lithium: From Least Useful to Most Important Element
TLDR Lithium, once considered one of the least useful elements, has now become crucial to the world's economy. Its industrial uses in glass making and aluminum oxide creation are significant, but its most prominent role is in lithium ion batteries, which have seen a skyrocketing demand. The search for answers to the cosmological lithium problem and the development of solid state batteries and lithium recycling are also gaining momentum.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
Lithium is the third lightest element on the periodic table and has gone from being one of the least useful elements to one of the most important elements to the world's economy.
02:06
Lithium is a reactive and soft metal that is not as abundant in the universe as models predict, and there is more lithium observed in stars that are poor in heavy metals.
03:55
Possible explanations for the cosmological lithium problem include the possibility that we are not observing all the lithium that is out there, that there is something about fusion in stars that we don't understand, or that there was an error in our understanding of the creation of atoms in the primordial universe after the Big Bang.
05:42
Lithium has industrial uses in glass making and the creation of aluminum oxide, but it is most commonly known for its pharmaceutical use in treating manic depressive and bipolar disorders, as well as its use in lithium ion batteries.
07:39
Lithium ion batteries are the most dominant use for lithium in the world today, and their development was so important that the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for their creation.
09:38
The demand for lithium has exploded due to lithium ion batteries, with production expected to triple in the next five years, and while there are concerns about other elements used in lithium ion batteries, such as cobalt, there are vast untapped reserves of lithium around the world and the development of solid state batteries and lithium recycling are also growing rapidly.
11:30
The widespread use of lithium as an industrial metal is relatively new and will be even more important in the future, potentially leading to increased efforts to understand the missing lithium in the universe.
