How the Earth’s population exploded

How humans “harnessed thin air to feed bns” — and created chemical warfare in the process: The human population has grown at a dizzying rate over the past century, due in large part to advancements in agricultural technology. As it became evident in the 19th century that nitrates and ammonia (found in manure) are key to increasing agricultural output, German scientists went to work to find sustainable sources of the gases, Bloomberg tells us. Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch eventually developed a process to convert the nitrogen found in air into ammonia, which significantly increased humans’ ability to grow food. The history behind fertilizer production gets interesting around the start of WWI, when Germany began using the Haber-Bosch process to make explosives — essentially making the chemists the founding fathers of chemical warfare (watch, runtime 5:16).