#Chemistry in Science Fiction

[dndspellgifs]

look, I know I've talked about this essay (?) before but like,

If you ever needed a good demonstration of the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", have I got an exercise for you.

Somebody made a small article explaining the basics of atomic theory but it's written in Anglish. Anglish is basically a made-up version of English where they remove any elements (words, prefixes, etc) that were originally borrowed from romance languages like french and latin, as well as greek and other foreign loanwords, keeping only those of germanic origin.

What happens is an english which is for the most part intelligible, but since a lot everyday english, and especially the scientific vocabulary, has has heavy latin and greek influence, they have to make up new words from the existing germanic-english vocabulary. For me it kind of reads super viking-ey.

Anyway when you read this article on atomic theory, in Anglish called Uncleftish Beholding, you get this text which kind of reads like a fantasy novel. Like in my mind it feels like it recontextualizes advanced scientific concepts to explain it to a viking audience from ancient times.

Even though you're familiar with the scientific ideas, because it bypasses the normal language we use for these concepts, you get a chance to examine these ideas as if you were a visitor from another civilization - and guess what, it does feel like it's about magic. It has a mythical quality to it, like it feels like a book about magic written during viking times. For me this has the same vibe as reading deep magic lore from a Robert Jordan book.

[iamthepulta]

As I'm studying, I keep finding fascinating tidbits of mining history/mineral processing that I want to write about. Like Tellurium is highly toxic, and even in low doses, (10 ppm), will give people "garlic breath". That's so cool!!! Gold-Tellurium processing is really cool!!!

[katie5000]

Ok, so I'm still thinking about that Legato hair tweet from last year.

Because I'm a nerd, I had to go down the human hair rabbit hole and read all about hair pigmentation and how it worked. The gist of that is that there are two types of melanin - eumelanin, which is black and brown, and pheomelanin, which is red and orange. Pheomelanin actually arose due to a natural mutation, and this is what gives redheads their distinctive hair color. But could this be made to happen with another color - like blue?

There aren't a lot of things in nature that are blue due to pigmentation, because blue is a difficult color to pull off at the molecular level - a molecule has to be conjugated in just the right way for it to absorb low energy light at the red-orange end of the spectrum and still remain stable. However, there is one well-known molecule that can do it - indigo. Usually indigo comes from a plant, but there are microbes in the human gut that can actually synthesize it from tryptophan - more specifically, the microbes synthesize something called indoxyl, which then turns into indigo when exposed to oxygen. The trick would be getting the gene or genes that do this out of the microbe and into human cells. The cells that handle human pigmentation are called melanocytes, and you have them in your skin as well as your hair. What you would have to do is find a way to get the gene(s) producing the color to confine itself to just the hair while sparing the other pigmented parts of the body. The metabolic pathway that the gene(s) code for would produce the indoxyl, which would be deposited into the hair, which would then turn blue on exposure to air as it grew out of the follicle.

[kneelbeforeyourdogbabylon]

Sins of Knowledge chapter 14

Chapter 14: the space between waking and dreaming

Rating: Explicit

Chaptered fic (14/15), WIP, posting every other week

CW/TW and tags: sex pollen, explicit content, dubious consent, ethical concerns, human AU, university AU, more tags at AO3. See AO3 for new spoilery warnings for this chapter!

See AO3 for main work summary

Chapter 14 summary:

Aziraphale and Mattias Fell have a chat. Also there are coffee cups, WING, and Crowley and Aziraphale reaching out in the spaces between. Also, smut.

Chapter 14 excerpt:

Crowley was in a library study room. Not just any study room. Their study room. The window showed the long dwindle of afternoon light, overcast and waning into evening. The overhead lights were off, the lamp in the corner giving off a dim golden gleam. And Aziraphale was there. Asleep with his white-blond head pillowed on his arms. Without a thought Crowley went to him. He laid hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders, and began to knead them. Scales peppered up out of the skin of his own arms. Crowley almost recoiled at himself. Stay calm. Just a dream. All of it? No. But don’t freak out now — don’t do anything to jerk yourself out of this lovely bit of calm — stay here, stay present.

Read it at the AO3!

Or start from the beginning here

So close to the end! I cannot believe the High Pollen Count event began back in April and this fic is still. Going. Which is a perfect segue to say, SO much disbelieving love to betas @cheeseplants and @gaiaseyes451 for providing AS ALWAYS invaluable science and uni knowledge, Britishisms, cheer-reading, and general writing assistance. You make this so much better and I love you 🥰 Also tagging @goodomensafterdark because I love you too and you're the best place 😘

[gaymarisa]

i love lecture recordings, i genuinely love listening to these like podcasts. this is entertainment to me, fun, learning in a way that does not bore me!

the moment they give me a single 10 page article though it takes me 5 business weeks to read it

[emotionally-charged-arson]

Character Spotlight: The Chemist (Ayreon's The Source)

Ask and ye shall receive.

In the grand scheme of countless intertwining Ayreon headcanons infesting my brain, I like to have a nice, compact theme to refer back to for each album. Arjen is borderline intentional about not putting themes in his work, but they creep in anyway and you can dig them up and work off of them with a little elbow grease.

For me, The Source is about loss of purpose, which is sort of an overarching theme of the Forever saga anyway, but it shows up on a more intimate level in this album. Especially when you pull traits for characters out of thin air when you're 14 and eventually find a red thread through the lot of them you didn't actually plan for.

I did a really general overview of most of my versions of the Source cast and their whole deal while they're on Alpha. Just a whole mess of science, religion and state all crammed into one, eventually leading to the 'Frame taking over. In some way or another, these people all know each other and support a cause of some sort. When they're forced to leave their home planet, they have to grapple with the fact that their lives there were altogether pointless and figure out how to embrace the sense of rebirth that's a part of the Forever package.

Almost all of their arcs follow the same overall timeline: they had some *thing* they had worked towards for the better part of their lives, it's all ripped away in an instant with Alpha's destruction, and during their time on Starblade, they work their way back up to a new sense of collective self-worth.

There are, however, a few notable outliers. The Captain, The Chemist and TH-1 still have that theme thing going for them at the end, but how they get there is a little different.

So. Chemist. Like I said, pretty much everyone in the cast has an idea of who everyone else is. Not this guy.

Thomas Giles Rogers is an organic chemist with zero personal affiliation with any other character pre-album story. He graduated from the same enormous central university most of them did, but had no interest in tying his research, much less his entire career, to the fate of the planet itself. Not that he was ever offered or cares about politics at all, but still.

His motivations lie on more personal grounds. Giles is prone to stress, nervous breakdowns in academic settings, all that fun stuff. He always has been. His doctoral dissertation and the ten years of his career following it were dedicated to the synthesization of safe alternatives to sensory deprivation drugs. Either supplemental to the process or replacing it entirely. His "big" project for most of that time was an injection meant to temporarily alter the human respiratory system, allowing someone to breathe underwater for therapeutic processes.

The endeavor was a total failure, for all the resources put into it. Giles is forced to abandon the project after years of constantly being denied grants to pursue its production. People not prioritizing what he wants to use it for, his ineffective presentation, him refusing to let people hire him for research to weaponize it, whatever. All that work was for nothing and it takes genuine a toll on him.

It's really just a career slump, but his self-worth is so firmly attached to his perceived academic success that he can't cope. Four years before TDTTWBD, he drops all his research, picks up some entry-level lab tech job and just goes through the motions. No grandiose motivation to save the world like the rest of these yahoos, just surviving.

But anyhow. Russell does his thing, the 'Frame takes over, and one way or another everyone except Giles is crowded in Nils' basement accepting their fate and hopelessly looking for livable planets with no power or digital resources.

Gross oversimplification of Chronicle I, by the way. Russell drags a broken android into the place, Floor shoots Simone's ear off, etc.

The only remotely plausible option is Y, pretty grim given that the surface is uninhabitable and colonization could only occur if everyone somehow grew gills. As Hansi laments when a switch goes off in his brain and he remembers some science expo he went to a few years back, where some guy was presenting prototypes for...pretty much exactly that.

By pure coincidence, Giles is one of Simone's clients, signed onto her private practice she started after quitting her job as the previous president's counselor. She knows where he lives and works, and she and Tommy manage to track him down amidst the literal apocalypse outside (on account of Tommy having no scientific background and pretty much no other use to the group than scavenging for essentials on the surface in this part. Bonus points that he knows how to use a gun and supposedly doesn't care about his own death).

Giles, like a lot of people has basically been hunkered down in his apartment since the 'Frame took power (about three weeks) and is all paranoid and starving when they find him but they find him, take him back and convince him to pick his work back up all the same.

So he's part of the group now, and alternative to everyone else on Starblade who has no point to their lives now, Giles has FAR too much of a point. Using years old notes and limited resources, he has to create the greatest scientific advancement in the history of mankind in the maybe....six months that people onboard are able to live outside of suspended animation. The total extinction of the human race to follow if he fails.

This...does not mix well with

1. his whole self-induced, major-accomplishment based pressure thing since it's a wildly amplified version of it

2. The fact that he killed a woman during Run! Apocalypse! Run! (defending another character but still) and his control to give life and take it away over so many people, existing and prospective, constantly rotating in his brain

3. The more upbeat, hopeful characters unwittingly holding their expectations for their brave new world over him and what Liquid Eternity needs to be to satisfy them

4. Pretty much everyone else involved in the political side of things deliberately ceased contact with friends or family outside the party's inner circle, to prevent distractions or the possibility of blackmail, while they were still on Alpha. That devaluing of personal relationships is what they're conditioned to and this is more the focal point of Tommy, Floor and Tobias' sort of...joint character development situation, but it has an effect on Giles. This much more openly sensitive, emotional guy is surrounded by these jaded assholes who have no sense of the pressure he's feeling in more ways than one. This effect also applies to James (Historian) in a way, and the two actually kind of have a rapport going about it at the end of Chronicle II (syncing up with their little Condemned To Live duet), but the only person who seems to fully get what's happening to Giles is Simone, someone who deliberately separated herself from said jaded political asshole clique and who has prior knowledge of his experiences on account of literally being his therapist.

All in all just. Not having a good time, insisting that he has to do this alone and eventually external assistance from one or more characters being the only thing that solves it.

The other part of this compact theme thing is that our purpose, our humanity, is defined by our relationships and reliance on other people. We need something to strive for in order to feel like a person, and ultimately that 'something' comes down to either the preservation of the self, the other, or of the collective.

Once you resolve that, there is one other thing that defines the human experience and that is death.

Death and a point, a person, to avoid it in the name of. And Liquid Eternity took both of those things away. From there arises stagnation and a lack of purpose with no means of escape, the hallmark of the Forever Race.

-

-

-

(gosh, I wonder if that ties into members of the party forcing away loved ones in the name of their progress even though it was pointless in the end. Or TH-1's self-preservation being their downfall after all the talk of cooperation and acceptance of emotional openness. Who's to say.)

[consult-sherlockholmes]

Just a little question of curiousity: What would be the better option, injecting them with a syringe filled with liquified datura seeds or with an overdose of insulin.

I would inject them under their tongue while they sleep so the scar won't be found. Afterwards I would pack them up in my car and drive at least two hours away from where I live. There I would dig up a 12 feet hole, bury the victim halfway, put the corpse of a dead animal on top and close the hole.

If I'm feeling fancy I may cut up the victim's corpse and and bury them all halfway with animal caveses on top, far away from my home.

Anyways, what's the better poison for this?

This is all theoretical and for science's sake, it's a fun mental exercise to sometimes plan a murder so do not be concerned. An usually endogenous substance like insulin that naturally exists in the body would be much harder to determine as the murder weapon, than an exogenous poison like liquified datura seeds that usually is not present in someone's body except if they have been poisoned. Insulin isn't part of regular tox screens, so if there is no suspicion no one would go looking for it. So in that case insulin would be the better choice.

It's difficult to determine and interpret insulin levels postmortem, insulin not being very stable and autolysis or hemolysis making blood as a sample impractical, which is why vitreous humour is used. Insulin levels can be determined with immunoradiometric assay (IRMA) or liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). In the case of natural insulin levels, it should be below the detection limit in the vitreous humour, but if the levels are increased due to poisoning it should be above the detection limit of the method, thus indicating that the death was not natural.

Another way to differentiate endogenous (your own bodie's) or exougenous insulin poisoning, is by looking at the ratio of insulin to C-peptide. During the synthesis of insulin in the body, C-peptide is cleaved from the proinsulin, which means that per formed insulin molecule there is also a C-peptide molecule formed, so with an endogenous poisoning the ratio of C-peptide to insulin should be 1:1, while if the insulin has been administered exogenously the ratio is >1 (more insulin than C-peptide).

And I am not entirely sure how you would want to create a proper solution of 'liquified datura seeds' that can be properly injected, because that would require purification and extraction of the active compounds. You can't just crush some seeds and put them into a syringe with a bit of liquid, it would clog up the needle. Meanwhile insulin already exists as solutions ready for injection, much better choice. Making such a datura seed solution would mean more effort, and would be easier to trace than insulin.

An injection under the tongue sounds uneccesary. Would be quite awkward trying to open someone's mouth while they sleep to put a syringe under their tongue, they would wake up and your plan would be foiled. And neither would it scar given scars are a healed wound and if they are dead there won't be any healing or scarring anymore. And why bother hiding the injection site when you already plan to dispose the body anway in a way so no one would find it. Hiding injection sites is only necessary when someone finds the body, but if the body is burried and decayed there won't be any determination of an injection site when the tissue is decomposed. But the whole process of transport and burial sounds a bit risky and could be prone to failure.

[rigelregent]

Blood Colours

I started thinking about blood colours, so here are some things I have thought of for some of my species:

Vanadium based: Yellow when oxygenated due to the +5 oxidation state; blue/purple when deoxygenated thanks to V(IV) or V(II) respectively. The people of {Amadala} have this.

Chromium based: Orange when oxygenated as chromium is in its hexavalent form and dark green when deoxygenated due to Cr(III). This flows through the veins of the Akina and the other «vertebrate» fauna of their world.

Iron based: Red when oxygenated due to iron(III), in the Ure-Jani and Araacr it gains a greenish tint thanks to chlorine, it gets darker when deoxygenated thanks to iron(II). I am basing this on hemoglobin.

I am basing these colours off those of the respective ions/salts in solution. If anyone has a better perspective on this and would like to add something, please do.

For more speculation on alien blood, see: xenology.info/Xeno/10.4.htm

[chuckbbirdsjunk]

[materialsscienceandengineering]

How science fiction predicted recent high-tech developments in chemistry

Real-world technology is often foretold by science fiction. In 1927, characters in the film Metropolis made video calls to each other. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry hung flat-screen color monitors on the walls of the Enterprise decades before we did the same in our living rooms.

The most obvious examples of technology in science fiction tend to focus on artificial intelligence, communication and transport. But futuristic chemistry is embraced by sci-fi writers too. For example, a central feature of Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World is a chemical antidepressant.

In recent years we've seen incredible leaps in chemical technologies—to the point where, as a chemist, I'm frequently reminded of some of my favorite fiction while reading about the latest big developments.

A plastic world

While environmental issues are a common thread in science fiction, not many deal with the blight of plastics. An exception is the 1972 novel Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters. This story, featuring a bacteria that digests plastic, would have seemed far fetched a few years ago. After all, plastics have only been around for 80 years or so, which hardly seems long enough for nature to evolve a mechanism to eat them.

Read more.

[bucket-of-mold]

So I am reading through the mechs fiction, and I read Archive Footage, and now I'm thinking about the difference between Ivy's brain and Brian's brain. Based on the way they talk and act, their brains obviously work very differently. Ivy usually talks in statistics and her fiction shows that she stores memory as data, more like a usual computer would. She shows that dilemma of trying to keep messy human thought inside of a binary computer. Brian on the other hand seems to speak more like someone normally would, and I haven't seen anything about his brain working in a similar way to Ivy's (I haven't read all the fiction yet tho so i might be missing something). He does have the morality switch though, which is something Ivy doesn't have. It makes me wonder about how their mechanisms were made for them to both have such different experiences with having a mechanical brain. Maybe because Brian is mostly mechanical, his brain integrates more smoothly with the rest of him, while Ivy's is more stark of a contrast? Or maybe Brian's was an attempt to have a computer brain be more outwardly human, which caused the bi-product of a morality switch that Ivy didn't need? There is much to think about and this is not even scratching the surface of my thoughts on how the mechanisms function, or how Brian and Ivy work in general.

[maddiedaboooooiiiii]

Bromine 35

Silly brown liquid AMA if you want

[therottenkingsreckoning]

[mediocrephd]

Water is amazing! I read 'The water book' by Alok Jha when I was doing my undergrad, and it was really really interesting and went in to the details of water's properties and how weird it is! I'd highly recommend it if you're interested in learning more about water being weird! :)

we should talk about water more often that shit is crazy

[driftwooddestiel]

i’m realising that so many of the things i’ve planned essays about for fun are things i could legitimately talk about for media and it’s made me so happy