the.com/phosphorus
the element that glows in the dark, fuels life, and burns down cities with equal enthusiasm
means A highly reactive nonmetallic chemical element (symbol P) essential to living cells, used in matches, fertilizers, and incendiary weapons, and known for forms that glow faintly in air.
from From the Greek 'phosphoros,' meaning 'light-bringer' — literally 'phos' (light) plus 'phoros' (bearer). The Greeks used it as a name for the planet Venus, the morning star that heralded the dawn. When a 17th-century alchemist isolated the glowing substance (the story goes that he was boiling down vats of urine in search of gold and got an eerie cold light instead), the old star-name was the obvious fit for something that seemed to carry light of its own.
- named for
- the Greek for light-bringer, an old name for Venus
- discovery
- boiled from buckets of human urine in 1669
- in your DNA
- its backbone is held together by phosphorus
- white phosphorus
- ignites on contact with air, burns to the bone
- bottleneck of life
- crops fail without it, and reserves are finite
guano islands of peru — bird droppings mined for phosphorus fertilizer, peak exports in 1860s-1870s generating massive wealth
phosphate rock florida — phosphate deposits in florida provide ~25% of world's phosphorus production today