Magical Pee & Faux-Lava

In 1669, German sausage merchant and alchemist Hennig Brand (a true gold digger, both romantically and alchemically) attempted to create the philosopher’s stone from his urine. -It was a slow year for sausage sales & after the Thirty Years War he never was quite right…

A simplified version of his process is that he heated boiled-down & chemically separated pee syrup for a really long time until it liquefied and burst into stinky flames. He then caught the liquid in a boiling flask where it solidified and proceeded to give off a ghostly UTI glow. Thus the birth of processed phosphorus.

Everyone knows Satan glows that same pale green and bursts into flame when in contact with oxygen. Which is why phosphorus was named “Φωσφόρος”. That’s fancy Greek talk for “light-bearer” which is the much less fabulous version of Lucifer’s drag stage name: the “Morning Star“.

Can you imagine poor Hennig Brand thinking he had conjured forth Satan in his own pee?! Uh-oh!

Though he never achieved life eternal, he did obtain historical immortality (comedic though it may be) & his glowing piss was a big hit at all those freaky baroque parties.

Fast-forward almost 300 years to another misguided corner of science: Monsanto.

Do to its many evil products, Monsanto has a special fondness for excessive quantities of that same fiery element: phosphorus.

Just like Satan; this substance plays such an important role in the company’s operations that an entire manufacturing division, one of the company’s six *six,six*, is devoted to the maniacal production of it. Monsanto’s phosphate plant began production in 1953 and has operated 24/7 ever since.

Phosphates are used in everything from soft drinks and toothpaste to explosives, nerve agents, insecticides, fertilizers, and herbicides. It ain’t called the Soda [Death] Springs for nothin’ kids.

Approximately one million tons per year of phosphate ore, is mixed with quartzite rock, coke, and large quantities of electricity. How much electricity I’ll pretend you asked?! Why, about the same amount every 24hrs as is consumed residentially by a city roughly the size of Ole St. Louie daily. All of which yields elemental phosphorus, and several other by-products. One of these is a calcium silicate slag (also a delicious food & industrial additive).

You’ve probably guessed that slag is farkin’ HOT. At approximately 1,400 degrees centigrade or 2,552 degrees fahrenheit, molten slag officially qualifies as industrialized faux-lava. It is poured into 600 cu. ft. cast steel pots on the backs of specialized trucks, hauled to the edge of an ever growing mass, and unceremoniously dumped. All that slag dumpin’ is slowly creating what any self-respecting Coloradan would term a “hill”. Still, it’s up to an impressive 150 feet high in some places, so I’ll take this opportunity to dub it the Big Rock Slaggy Mountain.

Hailed (by me) as the most predictable and unnatural volcano ever, you can see this majestic process around 5 times an hour, 24 hours a day.

One could say that Monsanto his been on the Biomimetic bandwagon since the 50′s.

& Now you finally have a reason to go to Idaho.

Thanks to the Center for Land Use Interpretation for the HOT tip and for generally being awesome.