// MATTER · ELEMENT 27 / 118atoms.no/elements
Co27
Cobalt
Co·Z 27·Transition Metal·58.93·⭕ 7A · D Minor
▸ The reading
interpretive · artCobalt hides at the exact heart of vitamin B12 — the only vitamin built around a metal atom — while its other career holds phone batteries and permanent magnets together. Iron-peak supernova output with an AGB neutron-capture postscript. Essential in microgram doses, strategic in tonnes: scale is the whole story of this seat.
The science below is cited as science; the symbolic layers are flagged as interactive art.
⚜ Periodic Frequency
7AD Minor
a seat struck in brass — testimony, not prediction
the seat has its own room on ⭕ THE OVAL TABLE — tap the code
▸ The lenses
▸ Discovery
Georg Brandt — isolated from cobalt-blue glassmaking ore · Sweden · 1735
▸ Stellar origin
Supernova iron-peak + neutron capture in AGB starsBoth stable cobalt isotope ⁵⁹Co and the radioactive ⁶⁰Co tracer are forged near the iron peak; the radioisotope is famously used as a stellar-explosion fingerprint.
▸ Reactivity
Slowly oxidizes in air; magnetic below 1121 °CHighest Curie temperature of the ferromagnetic elements. Cobalt's blue color is the ancient pigment in Persian tilework and Chinese porcelain.
▸ Applications
- Lithium-cobalt-oxide battery cathodes
- Strong permanent magnets (samarium-cobalt)
- Vitamin B12 cofactor
- Jet-engine superalloys
▸ Curiosity
Vitamin B12 is the only vitamin that contains a metal — and that metal, hidden at its heart, is cobalt.
▸ Related readings
a resonance drawn between readings — not a claim that they share an origin.