I'm John Bachelord, Dr. Ken Croswell, an astronomer, author of The Lives of Stars, and we're

talking about the origin of lithium.

Why is that important?

It's called white gold.

It's extremely valuable, but it turned into the lithium ion batteries that power the

Teslas and all of the other electric vehicles that are coming for the next century as we

move away from fossil fuel generated engines.

However, I learned from Ken that it wasn't until recently that anybody had observed lithium

actually being made in Novi.

How did they do it, Ken?

Well, this is what's very interesting.

The theory was worked out.

We were just talking about the theory of lithium production in Novi.

That was worked out in the 1970s and a prediction was made that Novi should be major producers

of lithium and the galaxy and here on Earth.

But nobody actually had seen any lithium arising in a Nova.

And even though people did go out and look for the lithium, they never found it.

And then in 2013, everything changed.

When two different astronomical teams, two different continents made the discovery of

the Beryllium 7 and also lithium in Novi.

One team was led by the Japanese and they detected Beryllium 7 in a Nova that occurred in 2013.

And then the second team, which was unaware of the first team's work, was based in Italy

...