Lithium find in Cornwall spurs hopes of regeneration

If anyone’s wondering why lithium is a somewhat-rare element (only 25th-most abundant in the Earth’s crust) in the first place—given that, by Big Bang nucleosynthesis, it “should” be the nearly as abundant in the universe as hydrogen or helium: we aren’t really sure! It’s an unresolved problem in physics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_lithium_problem

(We do know that stars can “destroy” lithium baryons at high-enough temperatures, and that does explain part of lithium’s rarity. But even given that, it “should” still be 3x more abundant than it is; or rather, the Big Bang should have produced 3x more lithium than it did, given our current models of it.)

I didn't know Cornwall was a mining center. I thought, "I wonder if there are any good collections of old mining structures and machinery" and then found this [1]. Thanks, old internet! I hope you don't get killed by the walled gardens.

[1] http://www.cornishmineimages.co.uk/

If someone is familiar with the exploration or mining industry:

Does this suggest that lithium rich brines could be found elsewhere as well and maybe in which environments they might be expected?

Why does it take half a decade to get going in such a case?

Hopefully we can ditch our ICE cars if the price is right. I long to buy a EV car that does 300+ mile range and can charge at 150kw+ for 20k-25k GBP.

It is strange to see the concepts like "regeneration" and "mining" in the same sentence