Cobalt retains its magnetism at temperatures up to 2049.8 F (1,121 C), according to the USGS.

About 30 percent of cobalt produced annually goes to the ceramic and paint industries, according to Nature Chemistry. As in ancient times, cobalt is still used in pigments today.(Spin is a property that describes the angular momentum of electrons spinning around a nucleus.) The atom they used? Cobalt. In 2010, German researchers captured the first images of an atom's 'spin' changing.Cobalt (alloyed with nickel) also makes up the skin of 'MagnetoSperm,' tiny robots developed in 2014 that wiggle like sperm in response to a magnetic field.It makes up the backbone of vitamin B12, which is key to blood formation and the functioning of the nervous system. Cobalt is an essential trace nutrient for health.The name cobalt comes from the German word for goblin, 'kobold.' Medieval miners considered this element troublesome because its ore released toxic vapors when smelted, according to the U.S.(Image credit: Greg Robson/Creative Commons, Andrei Marincas Shutterstock) Who knew? The isotope has a half-life of 77 days and gradually decays into iron-56. The supernova emitted about 60 percent of the sun's mass in cobalt-56, the researchers reported in the journal Nature. In August 2014, a team of astrophysicists reported the discovery of cobalt-56 in supernova SN2014J, an exploding star 11 million light-years from Earth.

But radioactive cobalt can occur naturally, too. The only stable isotope of cobalt is Co-59. Fellow Swedish scientist Torbern Bergman would eventually conduct further study to confirm Brandt's findings in 1780, according to a 2011 article in Nature Chemistry. (It turns red, 'like cherry juice,' according to a 1967 profile of Brandt in the journal Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science.) The discovery was controversial, according to the Brandt profile, and even in 1760, Brandt was still defending the find in a talk at the Academy of Science. Brandt described the metal and its properties, including its magnetism, and even described what happens when cobalt is dissolved in ammonia.

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