AncienTrails

“LAST night I dreamed about mercury — huge, shining globules of quicksilver rising and falling. Mercury is element number 80, and my dream is a reminder that on Tuesday, I will be 80 myself.

Elements and birthdays have been intertwined for me since boyhood, when I learned about atomic numbers. At 11, I could say “I am sodium” (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold. A few years ago, when I gave a friend a bottle of mercury for his 80th birthday — a special bottle that could neither leak nor break — he gave me a peculiar look, but later sent me a charming letter in which he joked, “I take a little every morning for my health.”

So, in addition to 66 being my age and the age of the UFO phenomenon, 66 is also the element number of dysprosium.  It’s an interesting element, and not in a great supply, “dysprosium comes from the Greek dysprositos (δυσπρόσιτος), meaning “hard to get.”  Like many of the rare earths and metals it is found mostly in China, 99%.

“…the wide range of its current and projected uses, together with the lack of any immediately suitable replacement, makes dysprosium the single most critical element for emerging clean energy technologies.”  Wikipedia

I have not, so far, dreamed of dysprosium, but who knows.