It sounds like the plot of a science fiction movie: humans are destroying the Earth, gouging huge scars in its crust, and polluting the air and the ground as they mine and refine a key element essential for technological advance. One day, scientists examining an alien meteorite discover a unique metal that negates the need for all that excavation and pollution. Best of all, the metal can be replicated, in a laboratory, using base materials. The world is saved!
OK, we amped the story a wee bit there. No aliens, for one thing (unless you know something we don't). But the rest of it is true. Two teams of scientists — one at Northeastern University in Boston; the other at the University of Cambridge in the UK — recently announced that they managed to manufacture, in a lab, a material that does not exist naturally on Earth. It — until now — has only been found in meteorites.
