Talk:Phosphine

Comments
I think the term "substituted phosphine" in the beginning paragraph should be "substituted phosphane". i did not attempt to edit the article since i am not sufficiently certain of this to risk misleading anybody. thanks

I am trying to find out if Phosphine is corrosive to PVC. We have an application to run Coaxial cables down a tunnel below a grain Silo where Phosphine is regularly used as a fumigant. Can Anybody help?

FYI - Phosphine is only corrosive to metals.


 * Actually, I believe that phosphine may attack certain plastics too, such as nylon, as well as attacking rubbers and plasticisers. You should be safe with polyethylene or polypropylene. Not sure about PVC- maybe, maybe not. Walkerma 17:49, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes phosphine is corrosive to both metals as well as plastics. Howevr, one may avoid its corrosion to plastics for which PH3 may prove dangerous and set fire in the presence of moisture. Hence, minimizing moisture may result in least damage to plastics. Muhammad Shoaib Ahmedani, (Ph.D.) Entomology, University of Arid Agriculture, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

PH3 is corrosive to metals and to a lesser degree platics. If you are running Coaxial through the bottom of a bin that is regularly fumigated with PH3, is the coaxial sealed airtight within the PVC? If not, you may have corrosion!

Is the word "complex" appropriate in the following sentence: "They are important in catalysts where they complex to various metal ions;"? 63.215.29.233 (talk) 11:31, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

' Yes. Complex, as in the article : Coordination_complex. 188.126.83.6 (talk) 22:42, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

This may not be appropriate for an article about a chemical, but the series "The Dragon Riders of Pern" has many references to phosphine, which enables the dragons to breathe fire.

"Inside the beasts, acids churned and the poisonous phosphines were readied. When the dragons belched forth the gas, it would ignite in the air into ravening flame"

John Saunders (talk) 05:12, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Mutagenic properties of phosphine
It's worth noting that phosphine has mutagenic and carcinogenic properties, which is not addressed at all in the Safety section of the article.80.240.162.190 (talk) 11:35, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Source? Here it says it is not carcinogenic: http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cpdb/chempages/PHOSPHINE.html. Elsewhere, it is discussed as potential mutagen, but according to this recent document, they claim it is not: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/317737/Phosphine_properties_incident_management_toxicology.pdf 92.194.87.77 (talk) 13:53, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I am concerned about the word "hydruyet" in the first paragraph of the history. I am pretty sure it should be hydruret, i.e., with an r instead of a y. The only citations (Google) of the word with a y are quotations of this article or translations of it. Oddly, the French version of this article doesn't mention this early name or, for that matter, anything about Lavoisier. 217.233.85.89 (talk) 12:19, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

I speak as a chemist. The usual English expression is "they complex various various metal ions," not "complex to various...." Alternatively, "they form complexes with various...." 217.233.85.89 (talk) 12:19, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Origin of name "phosphine"
I've been trying to discover who coined the term "phosphine". So far, it appears that the German-British chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann was responsible. In 1857, he published a paper announcing the synthesis of organic compounds containing phosphorus, which he named "trimethylphosphine" and "triethylphosphine".

(The French chemist Paul Thénard had prepared such compounds in the 1840s, but the process was dangerous and fraught with difficulties, whereas Hofmann's syntheses were not.)

Neither Thénard nor anyone else before Hofmann had used the term "phosphine". Hofmann coined the term "phosphine" in analogy with "amine" (organo-nitrogen compounds), "arsine" (organo-arsenic compounds), and "stibine" (organo-antimony compounds). See: A.W. Hofmann and Auguste Cahours (1857) "Researches on the phosphorus bases," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 8 :  523-527. From page 524: "The bases Me3P and E3P, the products of this reaction, which we propose to call respectively trimethylphosphine and triethylphosphine, … "

Until then (and afterwards), PH3 was called "phosphoretted hydrogen" — even Hofmann uses the term in his 1857 paper — however, by 1870, Prof. William Odling was calling it "phosphine" in his text Outlines of Chemistry; or, Brief Notes of Chemical Facts ; see p. 78.

VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 09:06, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

After further research, the word "phosphine" appeared as early as 1865. (It may have been coined even earlier.)

In 1865, Prof. William Odling was calling PH3 "phosphine":
 * William Odling, A Course of Practical Chemistry Arranged for the Use of Medical Students, 2nd ed. (London, England: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1865), pp. 227, 230.

In 1865, Henry Watts called PH3 "phosphamine", but by 1866, he was calling it "phosphine":
 * Henry Watts, A Dictionary of Chemistry …, vol. 3 (London, England: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1865), p. 199.
 * Henry Watts, A Dictionary of Chemistry …, vol. 4 (London, England: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1866), p. 523.

VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 13:36, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

What's the name of PH2-
What's the name of NaPH2? Sodium dihydrophosphide? Is sodium phosphanide OK? --Leiem (talk) 15:25, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Incomplete sentence regarding phosphine found in Venus atmosphere ('Possible extraterrestrial biosignature' section)
The sentence starting: "Though the Vega mission probe found" is lacking an alternative. It would be like writing: 'Though John went to town' -- though what? Wmsears (talk) 16:31, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Contradictory Vega interpretations
The article currently writes:


 * The Vega mission probe found rich reduction–oxidation chemistry between different phosphorus species and water at Venusian clouds, including phosphoric acid and phosphorus anhydride P4O6.[22] Phosphorus anhydride P4O6 was found to be the major phosphorus species of clouds below 25km. Phosphorus anhydride can react with water[23] forming phosphorous acid which at elevated temperature disproportionates into phosphoric acid and phosphine.[24]

The first citation is to Krasnopolsky 1989, Vega mission results and chemical composition of Venusian clouds, doi:10.1016/0019-1035(89)90168-1.

The recent Greaves et al 2020 Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus, doi:10.1038/s41550-020-1174-4, cites this same paper but has a very different interpretation of it, and then explicitly addresses the phosphorous acid pathway:


 * The only measured values of atmospheric phosphorus on Venus come from Vega descent probes[32], which were only sensitive to phosphorus as an element, so its chemical speciation is not known. No phosphorus species have been reported at the planetary surface. [...]
 * We also rule out the formation of phosphorous acid (H3PO3). While phosphorous acid can disproportionate to PH3 on heating, its formation under Venus temperatures and pressures would require quite unrealistic conditions, such as an atmosphere composed almost entirely of hydrogen (for details, see Supplementary Information).

The supplementary information notes that P4O6 is one of the sources modelled and found to be insufficient.

So I'm a bit confused as to what this paragraph is trying to say. It seems to be saying "there is another pathway", but it's for a chemical that's already been addressed by the recent study, and relies on a different reading of the same underlying source to say that chemical is there in the first place. Should we add more caveats/context? Should we remove this entirely? Andrew Gray (talk) 09:52, 16 September 2020 (UTC)


 * The authors claim they did an "exhaustive" search of steady-state chemistry as well as photochemistry and could find no chemistry which could explain their findings. Sure, they did. They recommend more sampling (direct, meaning sending a mission there) of Venus' atmosphere in their abstract, but make no recommendation for additional studies of the likely (and obvious to anyone who's had a university chemistry education) abiotic routes (that could be done here on Earth at a small fraction of the cost and at in a small fraction of the time). The chances that there are biological processes in Venus's atmosphere generating phosphine are almost negligible, imho. You'll note the discrepancy: there IS no known biology capable of existing (in steady-state) in Venus' atmosphere, and yet they suggest that as a reasonable possibility.98.17.180.195 (talk) 20:31, 16 September 2020 (UTC)


 * The paper seems to explicitly say they've considered the P4O6 / H3PO3 routes (among others) and concluded they'd be negligible, though I appreciate you don't seem to think they did a very good job of it. I'm not qualified to comment on how sound their work is myself - but "there's no abiotic explanation" is the central claim of the paper and suggesting that reviewers missed it seems quite remarkable.
 * As such, I think it's misleading to have this paragraph in - it suggests it's an obvious, uncontroversial, and factual statement that there is a well-understood process at work, even though the recent study argued there wasn't. We would really need to be able to cite someone saying this is a plausible mechanism to explain the phosphine - otherwise it's just original research.
 * There are certainly plenty of people saying "well, this shows there must be an abiotic route we don't know about" (and I think they're probably right, it's the most plausible explanation if not the most exciting one...) but that's quite different from saying that the P4O6 / H3PO3 route can explain it. Pending any such sources, I'm going to remove it. If we do keep it, I think we need some heavy caveats to clarify that this pathway was considered and rejected by the recent analysis, and that the Vega results are contested in terms of what they show; otherwise we're misleading readers. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:12, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Recent Venus Observation
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/venus-might-host-life-new-discovery-suggests/ Charles Juvon (talk) 01:27, 17 September 2020 (UTC)


 * tl;dr Even a more recent one: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.09852 (discovered thanks to Anton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjq08ErkF1c) Sleeditor (talk) 19:26, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Abiotic PH3
As of 2020, no known abiotic process generates phosphine gas on terrestrial planets in appreciable quantities, so detectable amounts of phosphine could indicate life.[19][20][21]

Not true. Coal fires:

Kruszewski, Ł., Fabiańska, M.J., Segit, T., Kusy, D., Motyliński, R., Ciesielczuk, J., Deput, E., 2020. Carbon-nitrogen compounds, alcohols, mercaptans, monoterpenes, acetates, aldehydes, ketones, SF6, PH3, and other fire gases in coal-mining waste heaps of Upper Silesian Coal Basin (Poland) – a re-investigation by means of in-situ FTIR extrernal database approach. Sci. Total Env., 698, 134274, doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134274 Eudialytos (talk) 13:45, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Seriously. Who wrote this? "Appreciable"? Meaning... what, exactly? There are abiotic processes that produce it. (h/t Thunderf00t). I think Wikipedia shouldn't beclown itself pushing pure speculation. -- Veggies (talk) 01:06, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * What produced coal? Life - so this production method does in fact involve life, albeit in the past. 92.12.86.15 (talk) 10:37, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

and others - FWIW - added the following to help clarify the text somewhat => More particularly, according to the original study: "Phosphine is a promising biosignature gas, as it has no known abiotic false positives on terrestrial planets from any source that could generate the high fluxes required for detection." - hope this helps - at least for starters - in any case - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 15:36, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Phosphine
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Phosphine's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Thompson2020": From Venus:  From Life on Venus:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 21:12, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Spelling - move to "phosphane"?
Right now I'm just kind of really confused as to whether phosphine or phosphane is considered the "correct" name. According to this article, the latter is the official international name according to the IUPAC, but both the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries only include the former name. Maybe it's not all that significant, but from what I can tell, this hasn't really been discussed before. I just noticed that Wikipedia tends to follow internationally standard spellings for similar subjects when available (see metre, aluminium, and sulfur), and as you can tell from the last of those titles, that doesn't inherently mean British English (Oxford Dictionary seems to prefer "sulphur"). Really, I'm just curious as to why this article seems to prefer "phosphine", despite establishing that the international standard is "phosphane", and didn't see any prior discussions either way. I get that, according to OED and MW as mentioned before, English in general seems to prefer "phosphine" and neither dictionary lists "phosphane" at all. Is that the reason? As I said, I'm really just curious about the reasoning either way. -136.56.31.46 (talk) 16:47, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Re "I'm just curious as to why this article seems to prefer "phosphine", despite establishing that the international standard is "phosphane"."  The phosphine-phosphane thing is a little confusing, but the thing to keep in mind is that they are the same class of compounds. Most of the editors here are US or Commonwealth, who mainly call PR3 phosphine.  If you are looking for rule-conforming nomenclature, Wikipedia ain't the place.  We are pretty good with facts though. --Smokefoot (talk) 19:07, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Just added definitions of "phosphanes" and "phosphenes" (mostly per IUPAC) that might help. –MadeOfAtoms (talk) 22:48, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
 * This may explain it better:

"::Phosphine's bright flame is famously keen
 * And phosphane's a name that's nearly unseen
 * But IUPAC's own game
 * Has taken its aim
 * So sometimes they seem just the same."
 * –MadeOfAtoms (talk) 06:58, 6 November 2022 (UTC)