Note: While it seems like something the military would be very interested in, the original research into Phase Fields and their generation and manipulation was funded by the mining industry. They imagined a time in which men or machines could use the fields to delve into the ground and retrieve valuable rock and minerals without having to destroy the surrounding rock. This time never came to be for a very practical reason: matter which is effected by a Phase Field no longer obeys physical laws, and – among other things – dissipates into unphased gasses, forever irretrievable.