Human Cells Producing Phosphine?

[LisaL]

My friend saw this article Italian woman stunned by exploding artichoke
and says this is proof spontaneous human combustion is possible because it proves phosphine is produced biologically. This sounds like complete bs, for the same reason that elemental sodium doesn't get produced biologically (redox potentials energy is too high for an enzyme to convert sodium into such an unstable form). There's no proof that article is even real. People make stuff up all the time but he won't listen. I looked up phosphine and the article I read said it can be produced from phosphates in an oxygenless acidic environment filled with iron but not by microbe enzymes

[LisaL]

bump..

[CraigD]

My friend saw this article Italian woman stunned by exploding artichoke and says this is proof spontaneous human combustion is possible because it proves phosphine is produced biologically. This sounds like complete bs ...

I think you’re right, Lisa.

 

The scientific literature on exploding artichokes appears sparse to nonexistent, but I found this 7 Jan 2014 article and its comments helpful. It consists mostly of information from interviews with artichoke growers, and a link from a comment to this 20 Dec 2014 debunking article (Italian language).

 

Calling these events explosions is an exaggeration. When the artichokes were cut with a knife, a small startling “pop” sound was heard, and dark, burnt-looking spots found on the knife and vegetable.

 

There appear to be 2 hypothesized causes:

• The artichoke contained trapped gas, perhaps caused by fertilizer. This accounts for descriptions of the artichokes “deflating” when they were cur.
• The artichoke contained resin, which commonly occur when plants resist insect attacks. Resin can pop and spark when scraped. The stains on the knife and vegetable may have been smeared resin, not burns.

There’s not much evidence that any explosive gas was involved. Weirdly, some people appear to have been alarmed that terrorists were planting bombs in green groceries, but there’s no evidence of that happening, either.