Half of the world's calories come from a single chemical reaction
Synthesizing nitrogen from thin air allows us to feed four billion people, but this molecular miracle consumes two percent of the entire planet's energy supply.
In 1909, chemist Fritz Haber figured out how to pull nitrogen from the atmosphere to create synthetic fertilizer, a breakthrough known as the Haber-Bosch process. This single reaction is the reason our global population surged from 1.6 billion to 8 billion in a little over a century. Without it, the world's soil could only naturally support about half of the people alive today.
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