It’s time to buy a lot of candles. And if we light them with matches, it will only be possible because of the anniversary in question. It’s happy 350th birthday to the discovery of phosphorus, an ...

"The human body is, roughly speaking, one percent phosphorus," writes Jack Lohmann in Quillette. The exceedingly rare element is one of six that are absolutely essential to life. (The others are ...

Phosphorus has spurred much concern among scientists due to erratic and rising prices, with some predictions pointing to scarcity bottlenecks as early as 2034 Tempe, Ariz. (July 16, 2013) Phosphorus ...

White phosphorus is one of three allotropes of the element phosphorus. The other two are red, an amorphous polymer, and black, a graphitelike polymer. The substance known as yellow phosphorus is ...

SciFri Book Club is reading The Devil’s Element by Dan Egan. There’s lots of ways to participate: Read the book, listen to our interview with the author, join our community space, attend an event, or ...

In a field of sugar beets outside Cambridge, England, Simon Kelly stands above a narrow trench gouged into the rusty earth, roughly 15 feet deep and 30 feet long. “Welcome to the pit,” says Kelly, a ...