DEEP IN THE ATACAMA DESERT OF NORTHERN CHILE, the sun beats down on hundreds of enormous, shallow rectangular ponds. The ponds, covering more than 17 square miles, are a patchwork of blues, greens, and yellows, like fabric swatches laid out by Godzilla looking to reupholster his couch. Technically, this is a mine- an industrial operation extracting tons of metal from beneath the ground. But there are no diesel-spewing drills, clanking conveyor belts, or even miners anywhere in view. It's quiet where I'm standing beside a teal-colored pool in the middle of the complex. The only sounds are the rumble of distant trucks and the ambient thrum of pumps pulling up mineral-rich brine from under the desert floor. Most of the extraction is performed silently, even gently, with nothing but sunshine and gravity working to slowly evaporate the water in the pools, concentrating it down to an oily yellow-green broth dense with one of the 21st century's most important resources: lithium.
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