Block of the Week: Glowstone
Sometimes, when you wander through the smoke and ash of the Nether, you might stumble upon something bright. Hanging from the ceiling, these clusters of blocks seem to have absorbed some kind of energy, as they glow with an unnatural light.
The first brave explorers who encountered this substance called it Glowstone, but, as happened with Greenland and shampoo, that name doesn't really describe its true nature. Just hit it with a pickaxe, and you'll discover that its nature is actually close to that of another block — glass. It breaks into dust that still retains much of its unnatural glow it had in block form. What a striking coincidence, as this block is also our Block of the Week.
Glowstone was added to Minecraft on October 30, 2010 in the "Halloween Update", which also added Jack o'Lanterns, clocks, and fishing. Normally, you'll find it on the ceiling of netherrack, but if you're having trouble finding it, clerics in Minecraft villages will sometimes sell it in small amounts in exchange for emeralds.
If you don't have the Silk Touch enchantment on your pickaxe, breaking a glowstone block will only give you 2 to 4 pieces of glowstone dust, which can then be combined back into a full block by placing them in a 2×2 pattern in the crafting grid.
The most obvious feature of Glowstone is that it glows, emitting light up to 15 blocks around, making it the brightest block in the game, along with sea lanterns, beacons, Jack o'Lanterns, and redstone lamps (which are made from glowstone). But less known is that glowstone can transmit a redstone signal upward but not downward, allowing for some very efficient circuit designs.
The closest real-world counterpart to glowstone is phosphorus, a chemical element discovered in 1669 that emits a faint glow when exposed to oxygen. This chemical reaction is quite ordinary, like any other, but its distinction is that it ultimately gives off light.
Phosphorus is a pretty interesting substance because not only does it glow in the dark, but it is also vital for life. There's a phosphorus cycle, just like the water cycle, where plants get it from the soil, then animals eat the plants, and when they die, phosphorus returns to the soil. However, unlike water, phosphorus is sometimes scarce. Growing food crops in huge quantities means you have to add a lot of extra phosphorus, in the form of fertilizer, to the soil to feed the plants.
Crushed bones (or "bone meal," as the item is called in the game) contain a lot of phosphorus, so early farmers used it as fertilizer, which in turn also makes your plants grow faster in Minecraft. But no matter how much glowstone dust I sprinkled on my crops during my extensive research for this article, they didn't seem to grow any faster. So my advice to you, Minecraft farmers, spend your nights fighting skeletons in the Overworld — and leave the Nether alone.
