Phosphorous discovered in outskirts of the Milky Way | Hacker News Reader

Phosphorous discovered in outskirts of the Milky Way

phys.org

66 pointswglb22 comments

This is huge and potentially encouraging news for (biological) extraterrestrial life. Because P is so rare, the chemical options for complex organisms are very limited in vast stretches of space. Now that we observed it in the outer reaches, it doesn't seem as implausible that life could arise there.

It'll be interesting to find out how it ended up so far out there. Maybe those clouds are sometimes more stable than we thought?

Phosphorus discovered. The noun, a chemical element.

Not just any regular old phosphorus, but extremely phosphorous phosphorus!

You’ll be prosperous if you find phosphorous phosphorus in the Bosporus.

I find your comments prephosphorous!

You should tell their boss-for-us.

Preposterous!

It would be more preposterous to get prosperous finding phosphor in the Bosporus than finding phosphorous phosphorus

Reddit has entered the chat

though we live dangerous

We're held like phosphorus

Maybe it's my non-native English letting me down here, but what other, non-noun, non-chemical element Phosphorous is there?

The title of the post (on Hackernews, above) has the spelling "Phosphorous" (with a U). This is the spelling of the Adjective (a describing word). It is a mistake in this context, because what has been discovered in the outskirts of the Milky Way is not a grammatical construct but rather a chemical element.

The chemical element is spelled without the U (even in British English!): Phosphorus.

https://grammarist.com/spelling/phosphorous-phosphorus/

> The title of the post (on Hackernews, above) has the spelling "Phosphorous" (with a U).

The noun also has that U, it's the O next to it that it doesn't have.

Well I feel pretty silly now. Thanks for pointing out the error

Well, at least I now know the word phosphorous exists.

I am now replacing “cromulent” with “phosphorous”. As in “that is a perfectly phosphorous statement”.

I did not know this. Thanks for the little lesson in grammar!

The title is a typo. "Phosphorous" is an adjective. The correct noun is "phosphorus." The linked article uses it correctly, so only OP screwed up here.

Yet the article url's slug uses the adjective, but it's grammatically correct! "2023-11-phosphorous-outskirts-milky.html"

And still yet, the article's diagram's caption does not use the correct word!! "Currently known Galactic distribution of phosphorous."

My bad

We know.

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