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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday,

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Speaker 1: and I would go into the vault, but my feet

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Speaker 1: are melting. It's all this green goo that you were

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Speaker 1: stepping in and now it's dissolving our feet by a

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Speaker 1: wonderful active coincidence. Today we're going to be exploring the

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Speaker 1: quest for Hollywood Acid. This is an episode that originally

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Speaker 1: aired May twelve, two thousand sixteen. It's about the idea

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Speaker 1: of that perfect movie acid, the acid that burns right

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Speaker 1: through everything. Uh. And this episode I think was highly

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Speaker 1: inspired by a scene in the movie Batman Forever where

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Speaker 1: a guy gets locked in a vault with a bunch

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Speaker 1: of acid. Oh that's right, that's right, it's perfect. Think

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Speaker 1: we discussed it in the episode. I will just wager

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Speaker 1: that I don't need to go ahead and explain it here, right.

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Speaker 1: The other major touchdown, of course, being the blood of

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Speaker 1: the Xeno morph. But what is that You were the

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Speaker 1: one I think you can up with the idea for

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Speaker 1: this episode because you were watching these movies with these

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Speaker 1: oulous acids in them and saying, well, what what would

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Speaker 1: that be? What actual, naturally occurring or even artificial acid

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Speaker 1: could eat through the whole of a ship like this

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Speaker 1: and have such such instant flesh melting capabilities. Right, So

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Speaker 1: we just thought we'd have a little rapid corrosion party. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: let's get into it. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your

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Speaker 1: Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. I Hey, welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert

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Speaker 1: Lamb and don Joe McCormick. Hey, real quick at the

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Speaker 1: top of the show here. If you want to explore

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Speaker 1: more of Stuff to bow your Mind, head on over

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is

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Speaker 1: our mothership. That is the main website where you will

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Speaker 1: find all of our episodes. You find videos, blog post

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Speaker 1: links out to our social media accounts, and if you

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Speaker 1: want to support the show, a great way to do

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Speaker 1: it is to simply rate and review us wherever you

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Speaker 1: get the show. Yeah, so, Robert, I've got a question

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Speaker 1: for you. All right, hit me, Joe, I'm gonna take

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Speaker 1: you to a dark place. This might be a little traumatic. Okay, okay,

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Speaker 1: do you remember nineteen nineties the Batman movies of the

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Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, Think back to Batman Forever, who that was

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Speaker 1: That was a Dark Time directed by Joel Schumacher, uh

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Speaker 1: starring Val Kilmer as Batman and Tommy Lee Jones in

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Speaker 1: it as the as two Face a very manic to

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Speaker 1: face if I recall, yeah, he was. He was kind

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Speaker 1: of all over the place that that one was snarling

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Speaker 1: a lot, kind of whipping his body around in a frenzy.

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Speaker 1: And that of course was he acid scarred in that

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Speaker 1: telling of the Uh, I believe he was. Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: so the story of two Face in that version is

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Speaker 1: that he's a Harvey Dent is the lawyer who becomes

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Speaker 1: two Face. Believe he's a district attorney and he gets

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Speaker 1: scarred on one part of his face and it drives

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Speaker 1: him insane. And uh yeah, I don't think they go

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Speaker 1: deep into the backstory in Batman Forever, But anyway, it's

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Speaker 1: Tommy Lee Jones and he's he's going wild and he's

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Speaker 1: really trying to get Batman in this one. So there's

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Speaker 1: a scene where Batman goes into a bank vault where

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Speaker 1: there is a I believe a vault guard of some

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Speaker 1: kind tied up, and when Batman goes in to rescue

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Speaker 1: this guard, the door slams shut and Acid starts pouring

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Speaker 1: out of all of the I believe out of the

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Speaker 1: safe deposit boxes. So a lot of people maybe we're

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Speaker 1: keeping their precious acid in this vault. Uh. And the

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Speaker 1: the vault guard realizes what's happening as as Two Face

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Speaker 1: taunts them that they're going to die in this bank vault,

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Speaker 1: and the guard says, oh no, it's boiling acid. There's

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Speaker 1: like a seven second YouTube clip of this that I

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Speaker 1: watch at least once a week. It's one of my favorites.

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Speaker 1: I I watched this for the first time, I think

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Speaker 1: because I don't know that I've actually seen this. Uh,

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Speaker 1: this Batman film. I was super into the first two. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I was a kid. Yeah, the Burden Batman's were great,

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Speaker 1: and I wanted to get into the Schumacher ones and

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Speaker 1: it didn't work. And I think part of the reason

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Speaker 1: it's not worth it is that boiling acid. Uh. It

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Speaker 1: tightly somes up everything about those films well exactly. And

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Speaker 1: one of the things that I find so funny about

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Speaker 1: it is, well, if two Faces trying to kill them,

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Speaker 1: why couldn't it be Oh no, it's boiling water. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if it's boiling what what difference does it make? Or

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Speaker 1: if it's acid, or hey, if it's just water, if

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Speaker 1: you're flooding, if you're flooding a sealed right, I mean

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Speaker 1: it can be that it's room temperature water. We're gonna drown. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And so this obviously brings in a favorite old trope

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Speaker 1: of the superhero genre, but really it's all throughout the

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Speaker 1: movies and this is movie acid. Noticed that the guard

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Speaker 1: in the vault doesn't say what the chemical compound is.

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Speaker 1: It's not like he recognizes, Oh no, it's hydrofluoric acid. No,

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Speaker 1: it's just acid. And this kind of acid plays a

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Speaker 1: role in all of our favorite you know, our favorite cartoons,

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Speaker 1: science fiction and superhero stuff. It's it's movie acid. It's

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Speaker 1: Hollywood acid. So you're probably familiar with this. You remember

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Speaker 1: lots of other scenes from Batman. I've bet right. It's

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Speaker 1: always in Batman, like the villain captures Batman, is the penguin,

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Speaker 1: or somebody's got Batman tied up on a rope dangling

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Speaker 1: over a vat of acid. Yeah, I mean, it's such

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Speaker 1: a like a vat of acid is one of those things.

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Speaker 1: It's it's a it's a perfect like human technological achievement.

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Speaker 1: And we can then utilize for menacing purposes. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's like the it's like having a whole bunch of

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Speaker 1: molten steel on hand or a hydraulic press. Right. It

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Speaker 1: represents all of the evils of human industry and sort

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Speaker 1: of the cold killer nature of technology. But at the

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Speaker 1: same time it's it's a great just sort of like

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Speaker 1: a vertical peril. It's always like a thing to have

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Speaker 1: below you. It's like a pit of piranhas or a

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Speaker 1: pit of crocodiles or something. In the case, it's a

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Speaker 1: pit of molecules that want to h want to play

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Speaker 1: nice with all of your skin. So what are the

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Speaker 1: properties of Hollywood acid or movie acid we might call it.

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Speaker 1: I want to list a few and maybe you'll have

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Speaker 1: some of your own for it. One of them is

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Speaker 1: that it causes severe and immediate burns to the skin

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Speaker 1: and soft tissues. Does that sound about right, Yeah, just

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Speaker 1: immediate scarification, multification um. And we can run through some

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Speaker 1: examples of that in a minute, right. So another one

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Speaker 1: is if you put organic materials such as a batman,

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Speaker 1: into a vat of acid, it will kill and then

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Speaker 1: rapidly dissolve that organism, so it has not only killing

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Speaker 1: and burning powers, but also liquefication powers. Okay, yes, you're

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Speaker 1: with me so far. Another one is that the colors

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Speaker 1: can vary, but it's never clear like water. You notice

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Speaker 1: that the acid in the movies it always is usually opaque,

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Speaker 1: usually a shade of green, purple, or orange. I find Yeah, green,

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Speaker 1: I think is the big one. And and I'll mention

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Speaker 1: a few examples that have instilled that that idea in me.

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Speaker 1: But like, if I was to draw a picture, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, doodle something with acid on the side of

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Speaker 1: the piece of paper, it would be green. Yeah. A

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Speaker 1: good example of the green acid is in that classic

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Speaker 1: episode of The Simpsons where Millhouse becomes fallout Boy and

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Speaker 1: there's there's radioactive man. They're filming a scene from the

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Speaker 1: movie that's real ascid. I want to see goggles people, Yeah, exactly, goggles.

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Speaker 1: They do nothing. Uh, it's great. But so another thing

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Speaker 1: about the ascid is that it displays ambient bubbling, so

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Speaker 1: you don't have to heat it up. It just naturally

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Speaker 1: boils like a like a pot on the boil. Well

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Speaker 1: that's so you can look at it and know that

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Speaker 1: it's acid, like it's it's bubbling, it's green. It could

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Speaker 1: not be more acid. Yeah, and of course the final

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Speaker 1: the final factor is often kept in a giant vat,

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Speaker 1: though sometimes also kept in something that squirts it out.

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Speaker 1: Do you want to keep it in an open vat,

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Speaker 1: open open top with some you know, room to have

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Speaker 1: some sort of a chain chain system in place and

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Speaker 1: some pulleys or whatever, however you want to position your

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Speaker 1: nemesis above it? Right now, Robert, tell me your movie

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Speaker 1: Acid story? What what? What are your memories from childhood

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Speaker 1: of beloved movie Acid? Oh? I have, I have several,

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Speaker 1: but the most scarring was at a young age, like

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Speaker 1: too young of an age? I saw RoboCop. Who lets

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Speaker 1: you watch RoboCop? At a young age? I think it

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Speaker 1: was like um, like an uncle's house and it was on.

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Speaker 1: But then again, RoboCop is so violent it's hard to

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Speaker 1: determine exactly what age during a childhood is appropriate to

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Speaker 1: watch RoboCop. A RoboCop an R rated ultra violent picture

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Speaker 1: for which there were toys, and I think still our

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Speaker 1: toys produced. Another thing I mean to say about RoboCop

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Speaker 1: is that the level of violence and it isn't incidental.

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Speaker 1: It's deliberately hyper violent, I would say. In the satirical uh,

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Speaker 1: for satirical reasons. Yeah, I mean it's a great film. Um,

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Speaker 1: but who I think back about to my seeing it

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Speaker 1: as a as a young person, and I'm a little

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Speaker 1: palled at times. But yeah, there's a scene where, and

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Speaker 1: I'm sure anyone who has seen this has this ed

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Speaker 1: burned into their mind as well, one of the villains

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Speaker 1: Hinchman's gets gets just coated in acid. I believe his

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Speaker 1: name is Emial. Is that it is that his name?

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Speaker 1: So in me gets coated in acid. I don't even

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Speaker 1: remember how it happened, Like did RoboCop shoot a vada

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Speaker 1: acid that was behind him? And setting Well, there are

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Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of sort of ambient

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Speaker 1: industry in the movie. It takes place in a dystopian

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Speaker 1: future Detroit, and they're like old factories with what we

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Speaker 1: would presume are just vats of toxic waste and acid

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Speaker 1: hanging around. Yeah, and somehow this guy gets it splashed

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Speaker 1: all over him during a car chase scene. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: then he comes just zombie like walking out shambling, totally meltified,

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Speaker 1: and and then a car runs over Like there's a

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Speaker 1: second there where you just horrified, like, oh, this poor guy,

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Speaker 1: look at the state he's in and then like Robocopper,

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Speaker 1: one of the villain, I think it's the main villain

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Speaker 1: gets him with the car and he just like splatters

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Speaker 1: like a like a water balloon full of blood. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's the dad from that seventies show who gets in

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Speaker 1: with the car. And I never trusted that seventies show

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Speaker 1: because of RoboCop. I knew what he was capable of.

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Speaker 1: Clarence Bodker, he's a great villain. But yeah, so he

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Speaker 1: hits him with the car and he just turns to liquid.

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Speaker 1: He's like a bag of soup and h and I

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Speaker 1: remember the villain he turns on the windshield wiper. Yeah

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Speaker 1: it's gross, but it's also there's tons of acid in

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Speaker 1: video games, right. Video games love this, I guess because

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Speaker 1: acids probably fun to animate. Yeah, and if you and

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Speaker 1: a lot of games, if you're doing a platform game, right,

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Speaker 1: it's a it's a wonderful thing to have to fall

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Speaker 1: into and sort of bounce out off. But my favorite

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Speaker 1: example is from Mortal Kombat two, which was like a

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Speaker 1: major major game for me when I was younger, and

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Speaker 1: in that you have two wonderful uses of acid. You

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Speaker 1: have a stage called I think the Deadpool where you're

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Speaker 1: fighting on a platform and there's just just green acid.

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Speaker 1: Uh it fills the room or ambiently bubbling, I can't

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Speaker 1: remember it's bubbling or not. But you if you upper

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Speaker 1: cut your opponent into the acid at the end of

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Speaker 1: the match for the fatality, then they just splash, they scream,

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Speaker 1: they disappear under the acid, and then when they float

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Speaker 1: up to the top, they're just a completely clean skeleton.

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Speaker 1: Oh how long does that take? One second to seconds? Okay? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And then of course that game also introduced the character Reptile,

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Speaker 1: who is a reptile, a lizard man ninja um, which

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Speaker 1: I just you know, you just take that for granted now,

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Speaker 1: but he also spits acids. So he takes his a

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Speaker 1: little mask off and goes and this, uh, this green

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Speaker 1: glob comes flying across the screen and burns you. One

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Speaker 1: of the most horrible acid scenes I remember from a

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Speaker 1: kid was from the movie The Fly. We shouldn't dwell

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Speaker 1: on this kind of great movie, but yeah, the fly

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Speaker 1: has digestive enzymes. I suppose that he sort of like

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Speaker 1: spits out on people too homogenized their flesh. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: think there's an early scene where Brundle fly the of course,

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Speaker 1: you know, if you haven't seen it, first of all,

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Speaker 1: go see it. But mad scientist and a fly their

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Speaker 1: DNA is spliced via teleportation accident, and there's a scene

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Speaker 1: where he's recording himself feeding on something like just a

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Speaker 1: bunch of sugary junk food, right, and you don't actually

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Speaker 1: see it, happy just hear it, and it's horrific. And

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Speaker 1: then of course later he weaponizes this biological effect. And

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Speaker 1: speaking of weaponized acid biology, we would have to mention

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Speaker 1: I guess this will be our final example of the

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Speaker 1: xenomorph from the films. Uh So, when Ridley Scott's Alien,

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Speaker 1: you might remember this the old classic alien. We first

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Speaker 1: see the xenomorphous acid blood during the scene where, if

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Speaker 1: you'll remember, John Hurt's character gets a gets an alien

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Speaker 1: parasite attached to his face called a face hugger. Yea

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Speaker 1: like burns through his helmet attached. Yeah, yeah, it comes

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Speaker 1: through his face mask and then it's attached to his

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Speaker 1: face and and they're trying to decide if they should

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Speaker 1: cut it off of him on the spaceship and Ian

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Speaker 1: Holme eventually decides to cut one of its fingers off

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Speaker 1: to see if they can remove it, and it squirts blood,

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Speaker 1: and this blood hits the floor and it sizzles when

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Speaker 1: it splashes on the floor, and then continues to eat

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Speaker 1: right through the material of the spacecraft's floor and then

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Speaker 1: drops down through like two more floors, I think, through

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Speaker 1: the levels until it eventually stop reacting a few levels down,

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Speaker 1: finally neutralizes and it goes through the entire hole. And

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Speaker 1: then Tom Skirt's character Captain Dallas, he says he's never

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Speaker 1: seen anything like that before except quote molecular acid, which

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Speaker 1: is funny that that term doesn't really make any sense

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Speaker 1: since all acids are composed of molecules. Uh. And in

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Speaker 1: the sequels they correct this by saying the aliens have

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Speaker 1: concentrated acid for blood, which does make more sense in

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Speaker 1: the sense that they're suggesting it's not like vinegar or

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Speaker 1: some of their friendly acid that's highly deluded to a

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Speaker 1: safe concentration. It's a highly concentrated, strong acid. But later

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Speaker 1: in this episode, we should explore exactly what might be

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Speaker 1: going on in terms of the aliens blood, how it

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Speaker 1: could be that acidic, if there were something truly like

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Speaker 1: that in nature. Yes, we will circle back around to

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Speaker 1: the xenomorphs at the end. But anyway, so, why why

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Speaker 1: this obsession with acid? We we love this stuff. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it keeps showing up in our media all the time,

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Speaker 1: even though we're not really we can't be bothered to

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Speaker 1: learn all the chemistry of exactly what chemicals are are

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Speaker 1: out there that could do real harm to our body.

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Speaker 1: So it's always just acid. You know, there's some acids.

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Speaker 1: It's just basically like a magical corrosive substance. Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: So we we wanted to talk today about the real

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Speaker 1: science of strong acids, and I don't know to what

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Speaker 1: extent you can find chemicals in the real world that

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Speaker 1: match up to these the movie Acid and how close

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Speaker 1: you can get. Yes, okay, So to give you the

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Speaker 1: basics before we get into the strongest acids out there

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Speaker 1: the movie Acid, we we should do a real simple

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Speaker 1: overview of acids, bases, and pH I'm not going to

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Speaker 1: turn this into a chemistry class, but we do need

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Speaker 1: to sort of explain how they work. So, first of all,

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Speaker 1: picture your periodic table and then go directly to square one. Hydrogen.

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Speaker 1: It's the most basic atom in the universe. It's got

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Speaker 1: one proton and one electron, and most of the hydrogen

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Speaker 1: in the universe has no neutrons, but if you want

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Speaker 1: to add one or two, you can get deuterium or tritium.

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Speaker 1: But we're not really concerned with that right now. So

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Speaker 1: your hydrogen atom one proton, one electron, and it's electrically

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Speaker 1: neutral because it's balanced like that. The electron has a

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Speaker 1: negative charge, the proton has a positive charge. If hydrogen

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Speaker 1: loses its electron, it becomes a hydrogen ion, which is

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Speaker 1: just a proton. It's one single, lonely proton with an

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Speaker 1: unbalanced positive charge, and of course nature hates that unbalanced

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Speaker 1: positive charge. It wants to get back together, so that

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Speaker 1: lonely proton is going to be looking for a way

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Speaker 1: to join up with something that has a negative charge

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Speaker 1: and again become electrically neutral. So water is made of

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Speaker 1: the electrically neutral molecule H two. Oh. That's one oxygen

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Speaker 1: atom bonded with two hydrogen atoms. And if one of

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Speaker 1: the two hydrogen atoms in the water molecule breaks free,

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Speaker 1: it just runs off, says I'm gonna do my own

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Speaker 1: thing free of a water molecule, and leaves its electron

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Speaker 1: with that water molecule you're left with a hydrogen ion

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Speaker 1: on which is just that positively charged free proton proton,

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Speaker 1: and then a hydroxide molecule which is O H minus.

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Speaker 1: It's a molecule with a negative charge with one oxygen

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Speaker 1: atom one hydrogen atom. Now, this can happen naturally in water.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes this is called the the ionization of water autoionization

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Speaker 1: of water. You can just have water sitting there in

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Speaker 1: a glass and some subset of the molecules within it

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Speaker 1: are going to undergo this reaction where a hydrogen proton

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Speaker 1: leaves one of the molecules, joins to another one, and

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Speaker 1: that creates this hydroxide molecule OH negative, negatively charged. And

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Speaker 1: then also and I H a molecule called hydronium, which

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Speaker 1: is H three Oh. It's a positively charged water molecule

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Speaker 1: that has three hydrogens on it. And so here's where

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Speaker 1: we get into acids and basins bases. There are several

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Speaker 1: different chemical definitions, but we're gonna go with the Bronze

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Speaker 1: stead Lowry definition because you know which other definition would

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Speaker 1: you go with? This is obviously the best. It's named

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Speaker 1: after the Danish chemist Johannus Nicolaus Brounze said and the

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Speaker 1: English chemist Thomas Martin Lowry. And so the way it

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Speaker 1: goes is this, an acid is a hydrogen ion donor,

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Speaker 1: in other words, a proton donor. It's a chemical that

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Speaker 1: when you put it into water, it wants to send

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Speaker 1: free hydrogen ions, these protons out into the solution, and

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Speaker 1: in turn that increases the concentration of hydronium or H

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Speaker 1: three oh, that positively charged molecule. Is talking about the

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Speaker 1: opposite of this is a base. A base is a

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Speaker 1: hydrogen ion recipient or a proton recipient. When you put

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Speaker 1: it into water, it wants to increase the hydroxide concentration.

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Speaker 1: It makes more molecules of O H minus the negatively

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Speaker 1: charged variant of water. So what would be an example

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Speaker 1: of this, Okay, So one would be, for example, hydrochloric acid.

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Speaker 1: So you put hydrochloric acid in the water, and it

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Speaker 1: wants to break apart and donate that positively charged hydrogen

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Speaker 1: ion to the water, creating some negatively charged chloride and

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Speaker 1: positively charged hydronium. And here hc L is the acid

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Speaker 1: and water is the base by the Bronze Dead Lowry definition.

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Speaker 1: But all this stuff about acids and bases is generally

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Speaker 1: going to be concerning aqueous solutions, in other words, putting

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Speaker 1: stuff in water. Uh. And so this has a really

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Speaker 1: awesome name, by the way, and it's known as protonation.

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Speaker 1: So when you add a strong acid to a water,

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Speaker 1: because you're giving away those positively charged uh hydrogen ions,

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Speaker 1: you're proton ating the water. Uh and on. Of course,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, you can use a base to

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Speaker 1: d protonate a solution. One more piece of terminology. You've

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Speaker 1: probably heard of the strength of acids and bases expressed

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Speaker 1: in terms of pH. They say, you know, an acid

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Speaker 1: as a pH of three or pH of six. What

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Speaker 1: does that mean? pH is just the concentration of those

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Speaker 1: high hydrogen ions in a solution. So normal water that's neutral,

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Speaker 1: and the neutral pH is usually said to be seven,

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Speaker 1: So that would be one times ten to the negative

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Speaker 1: seven moles per leader of hydrogen ions. And we're not

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Speaker 1: going to stay on this math for a long time,

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Speaker 1: but just to be clear, a mole is just a

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Speaker 1: measure of how many molecules you got in something, and

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Speaker 1: moles per leader would be the concentration of how many

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Speaker 1: molecules you've got per leader of water. Specifically, a mole

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Speaker 1: is six point o two and then some more numbers,

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Speaker 1: but basically six point o two times ten to the

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Speaker 1: twenty three. There's a lot of molecules out there. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so this is this is expressed by saying it

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Speaker 1: has a pH of seven. So if you have a

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Speaker 1: compound with a lower pH, that's gonna get more acidic.

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Speaker 1: They donate protons harder, they say, take these protons, take them.

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Speaker 1: I can put that in um in perspective, what lemon

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Speaker 1: juice is it too? I believe, yeah, that's about right.

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Speaker 1: In fact, we can read a few a few examples

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Speaker 1: of phs and and then also on the other end

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Speaker 1: of the scale, uh, compounds with higher pH values are

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Speaker 1: stronger bases, they're more alkaline, they steal protons harder their

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Speaker 1: recipients of protons. Uh. And so just to give a

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Speaker 1: few examples on the pH scale, I just found an

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Speaker 1: illustration online that gives some basic general ideas. Like we said,

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Speaker 1: distilled water is going to be a seven. It's neutral.

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Speaker 1: That seawater is going to be a little more of

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Speaker 1: a base, it's more like an eight. And then you

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Speaker 1: get baking soda solution, it's a little more it's like

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Speaker 1: eight points something bleach is gonna be like thirteen. That's

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Speaker 1: a strong base. But then going lower on the scale,

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Speaker 1: acids are going to be things like vinegar is going

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Speaker 1: to be around a three or four. Orange juice is

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Speaker 1: going to be around a three or a four. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting that vinegar is between orange juice and carbonated beverages,

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Speaker 1: with carbonated beverages being higher acidic level than vinegar. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: they usually say Coca cola is pretty urn acid, and

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Speaker 1: I think that was their original slogan. Taste the acid.

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Speaker 1: And then once you get really low, closer to zero

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Speaker 1: on the scale, you've got something like battery acid. Just

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Speaker 1: really intense, strong acid. Take all the protons, take them all, right.

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Speaker 1: And that's that is often where we see the at

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Speaker 1: least the idea of Hollywood acids in that area, The

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Speaker 1: idea like this is battery acid, this is industrial acid.

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Speaker 1: This is highly corrosive stuff that will pick your skeleton dry. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I should point out that we're gonna be talking

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Speaker 1: about how strongly acids can dissolve things like organic materials today.

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Speaker 1: And so because the acid that reacts with you does

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Speaker 1: so through a chemical reaction, the chemicals involved matter, so

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Speaker 1: some acids might actually have a lower pH than others

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Speaker 1: but still be less harmful. For example, hydrofluoric acid, when

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today, is one of the

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Speaker 1: most deadly acids out there, but it doesn't necessarily have

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Speaker 1: the lowest pH. And then when we're talking about the

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Speaker 1: deadly aspects of acids, another thing we'll touch on two

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Speaker 1: is that sometimes it's not only the corrosive aspects of

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Speaker 1: the acid, but what happens when it when it has

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00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:14,920
Speaker 1: when it undergoes a chemical reaction, what kind of gases

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Speaker 1: can be admitted there. Some of these examples you end

410
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Speaker 1: up with with toxic gases that are released when the

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Speaker 1: acid comes into contact with the with the right substance exactly.

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Speaker 1: And another thing tying into hydrofluoric acid, which we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about a little more in a minute, uh,

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Speaker 1: the danger associated with it isn't just from say, topical burns.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't just burn you from the outside in and

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Speaker 1: and kill you that way. By getting into your skin

417
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Speaker 1: and then getting into your blood, it can cause systemic

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Speaker 1: problems that can kill you, for example by causing a

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Speaker 1: heart attack right and for longed exposure to Some of

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Speaker 1: these have also been linked to cancer, So there are

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Speaker 1: a number of ways that these these dangerous substances can

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Speaker 1: can harm you. Yeah, okay, So let's say, based on

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Speaker 1: everything we've just looked at, you're going to try to

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Speaker 1: dissolve a organic material such as a batman. So you

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Speaker 1: have a very strong acid, so you've got a vat

426
00:23:05,640 --> 00:23:09,440
Speaker 1: of it, and you put that acid into an aqueous solution,

427
00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:12,280
Speaker 1: meaning water. So you've got your acid dissolved into water,

428
00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:15,159
Speaker 1: and then you put your batman in. What's going to

429
00:23:15,280 --> 00:23:18,600
Speaker 1: happen to your batman? Well, depending on the makeup of

430
00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:21,040
Speaker 1: the solution, what's probably gonna happen is that the acidic

431
00:23:21,119 --> 00:23:25,639
Speaker 1: solution will begin breaking the chemical bonds of molecules on

432
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:28,719
Speaker 1: the outer surface of the batman, so that you know,

433
00:23:28,760 --> 00:23:32,360
Speaker 1: the excess of protons and charged molecules can form bonds

434
00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:36,600
Speaker 1: with other molecules in that batman material, and assuming it

435
00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:38,600
Speaker 1: can eat through the batman's suit, is going to start

436
00:23:38,640 --> 00:23:41,240
Speaker 1: hacking up the lipids and the protein molecules in the

437
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:44,959
Speaker 1: batman's skin, forming new chemical bonds and slowly turning this

438
00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:53,800
Speaker 1: imbalanced acid water batman solution into a more homogeneous gloup. Basically, Yes, however,

439
00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:56,199
Speaker 1: there are probably some materials in the Batman and the

440
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:59,000
Speaker 1: Batman's suit that will not react with the acid, meaning

441
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:02,280
Speaker 1: you're not likely to end up with a perfectly homogeneous mixture.

442
00:24:02,320 --> 00:24:06,400
Speaker 1: You might get some glupe with some lumps in it. Essentially,

443
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:10,880
Speaker 1: the villain's acid just wants to bring Batman into equilibrium.

444
00:24:11,080 --> 00:24:13,160
Speaker 1: Isn't that a nice way of thinking about it? Yeah?

445
00:24:13,200 --> 00:24:16,840
Speaker 1: He is definitely a character out of balance with the world, right,

446
00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:19,520
Speaker 1: and so unless somebody perhaps comes along with a dump

447
00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:22,679
Speaker 1: truck through full of a week base like baking soda

448
00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:25,760
Speaker 1: to pour in and neutralize the solution, that's what's going

449
00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:28,000
Speaker 1: to happen. Though I'm not sure exactly how that would

450
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:29,639
Speaker 1: work out for the Batman if he's still in the

451
00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 1: vat while they're neutralizing it. Yeah, would it? Would there

452
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:36,960
Speaker 1: be an explosion, an eruption? I don't know that. I

453
00:24:37,240 --> 00:24:41,520
Speaker 1: think the classic Batman TV series, of course, with its

454
00:24:41,600 --> 00:24:45,840
Speaker 1: rigorous approach to science, you would probably see Robin show

455
00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:48,399
Speaker 1: up dump the base in. Everything would turn to a

456
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:51,719
Speaker 1: big foam and uh everything, it would It would be

457
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 1: like a foam slippery dance fight party. Yeah, yeah, everybody

458
00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:59,720
Speaker 1: does the twist. All right, We're gonna take a quick

459
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:01,640
Speaker 1: break and when we come back, we're going to look

460
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:11,600
Speaker 1: at a rogues gallery of dangerous acids. All right, we're back.

461
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:14,639
Speaker 1: Well let's yeah, let's let's roll through a few examples

462
00:25:14,840 --> 00:25:18,679
Speaker 1: of some powerful, potent real world acids. And again we're

463
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:21,760
Speaker 1: not we're gonna try not to just really chemistry class

464
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:24,040
Speaker 1: you too much on these, but we're gonna, you know,

465
00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:28,159
Speaker 1: roll through the some of the basic health ratings and

466
00:25:28,280 --> 00:25:31,440
Speaker 1: um and and attributes of these substances. Well, we talked

467
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:35,399
Speaker 1: about early on the idea of these these acids that

468
00:25:35,400 --> 00:25:39,040
Speaker 1: occur in biology, and one acid that definitely occurs in

469
00:25:39,119 --> 00:25:42,920
Speaker 1: biology is hydrochloric acid HCl. So this is going to

470
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:46,760
Speaker 1: be a bond between hydrogen and chlorine and it gets

471
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:49,080
Speaker 1: the job done. And I want to note that, uh

472
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 1: these properties are coming off of the m s d

473
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:54,720
Speaker 1: S as Material Safety data sheet. It's a good sheet. Yeah,

474
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:58,160
Speaker 1: if you if you're interested in pretty much any substance,

475
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:02,080
Speaker 1: any chemical substance, you can journal. We find um an

476
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 1: MSDS on on the internet for this and uh it's

477
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:08,400
Speaker 1: it can be a little bit interesting, a little bit technical,

478
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:11,639
Speaker 1: depending on how much that you read. Uh So, the

479
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:15,439
Speaker 1: appearance of hydrochloric acid, it would not work in a

480
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:18,240
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat game because it's it's colorless, though it is

481
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:22,679
Speaker 1: a fuming liquid, has a pungent odor of hydrogen chloride,

482
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:25,440
Speaker 1: which means you're you're doing the bank vault with Batman

483
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:29,679
Speaker 1: might be able to sniff it out. And um, when

484
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:33,520
Speaker 1: it comes to its solubility, infinite solubility, and water with

485
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:39,240
Speaker 1: slight evolution of heat, not necessarily boiling, but slight evolution. Right,

486
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:42,879
Speaker 1: And so the the MSDS comes with these ratings. It's

487
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:44,879
Speaker 1: a great rating system. It's kind of like the the

488
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:47,399
Speaker 1: m p a A for acids. Know what you're getting

489
00:26:47,400 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: ahead of time exactly. Um, the most of the ones

490
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 1: we looked at use the JT. Baker s A f

491
00:26:55,200 --> 00:26:58,679
Speaker 1: T data scores essentially given it. Like you know, it's

492
00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: kind of like character classes and done and dragons. Right,

493
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:07,080
Speaker 1: it's health rating, it's flammability rating, reactivity rating, contact rating, etcetera. Um,

494
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:09,280
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna deal with all these, but but as

495
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:11,800
Speaker 1: far as hydrochloric acid goes, it's health rating is a three,

496
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:16,000
Speaker 1: which is severe like a poison level zero in flammability.

497
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:19,639
Speaker 1: Reactivity rating is a too. Contact rating is three that

498
00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:22,959
Speaker 1: means it's severe. It's corrosive. Do not touch it, so

499
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:25,120
Speaker 1: you need to if you're handling this stuff in the lab,

500
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: you need some protective measures in place. Yeah, it's highly corrosive,

501
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:32,240
Speaker 1: so it's dangerous for us to inhale if we should

502
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:34,439
Speaker 1: not come into contact with it on our eyes, on

503
00:27:34,480 --> 00:27:38,000
Speaker 1: our skin. Do not ingest it. Uh. You don't want

504
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:43,119
Speaker 1: to undergo chronic light exposure to it either. Um. And

505
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:45,639
Speaker 1: then oh yeah, when it's heated to decomposition, it emits

506
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:49,359
Speaker 1: toxic hydrogen chloride fumes and will react with water or

507
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 1: steam to produce heat and toxic and corrosive fumes. Yeah.

508
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:55,919
Speaker 1: But of course, as I mentioned earlier, despite all this,

509
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 1: you've got hydrochloric acid in your body, that's right. I mean,

510
00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 1: this is the stomach acid. This is uh, this is

511
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 1: part of you. And really it's an important thing to

512
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:07,160
Speaker 1: keep in mind with acids in general. Like acids are

513
00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 1: part of our chemical world. Acids are part of the

514
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:13,800
Speaker 1: chemistry of life. They're part of our biochemistry, uh, in

515
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:18,679
Speaker 1: varying degrees. So yeah, the even though we like to

516
00:28:18,840 --> 00:28:22,960
Speaker 1: position acid in that vat of of man made peril, uh,

517
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:26,400
Speaker 1: it's really just a part of our world. So parietal

518
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:29,040
Speaker 1: cells produce hydrochloric acid in our body. It's a strong

519
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:31,399
Speaker 1: acid helps you break down your food. The acid in

520
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:33,600
Speaker 1: your stomach is so concentrated that if you were to

521
00:28:33,600 --> 00:28:36,440
Speaker 1: place a drop on a piece of wood, it would

522
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:40,400
Speaker 1: eat right through it. Really yeah wow. And the G

523
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 1: cells produce gastron, a hormone that facilitates the production of

524
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 1: hydrochloric acid by the parietal cells. So the stomach, because

525
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:49,920
Speaker 1: of course, one of the big questions is, well, why

526
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:53,160
Speaker 1: doesn't the acid in our stomach consumers right, Well, the

527
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:56,479
Speaker 1: stomach is producted by the epithelial cells, which produce and

528
00:28:56,520 --> 00:29:02,280
Speaker 1: secrete a bicarbonate rich solution that coats the mucosa. Okay,

529
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: so that's taking the method of saving the batman by

530
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 1: dumping a bunch of baking soda into the bat Yeah. Yeah,

531
00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: putting in a base exactly. The bicarbonate is an alkaline,

532
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:15,280
Speaker 1: A base neutralizes the acid is secreted by those parietal cells,

533
00:29:15,280 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 1: producing water in the process. And this continuous supply of

534
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 1: bicarbonate is the main way that your stomach protects itself

535
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 1: from autodigestion um and the overall acidic environment. If you're

536
00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:29,960
Speaker 1: if you're tummy. So uh so, it sounds like this

537
00:29:30,280 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: process of creating the base to neutralize it is not

538
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 1: something you want going wrong in your body. Right, yeah,

539
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 1: that's one you generally what a good a good balance

540
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:42,800
Speaker 1: in your stomach chemistry. Yeah, okay, so hydrochloric acid, that's

541
00:29:42,840 --> 00:29:46,720
Speaker 1: nothing to be toyed around with. But there are stronger

542
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:49,880
Speaker 1: and more dangerous acids out there, and I think maybe

543
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: we should move on. So if if hydrochloric acid was

544
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:55,640
Speaker 1: sort of the I don't know, the riddler of the

545
00:29:55,720 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 1: acid rogues gallery, I think it's time to move onto

546
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 1: the joker. Yes, the joker would definitely be sulfuric acid, right, yeah,

547
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:06,000
Speaker 1: And this is one I would say of all the

548
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 1: acids they're technical names, sulfuric acid is the one that

549
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:13,880
Speaker 1: is that is most commonly used in fiction, and not

550
00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:16,360
Speaker 1: without a real deep understanding of what it is. But

551
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:19,320
Speaker 1: like the name itself sounds a little scary, sulfur It's

552
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:23,560
Speaker 1: it's hellish, right, sulfuric the the name itself sounds a

553
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 1: little bit evil. Well, chemically, it's H two S O four,

554
00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:30,719
Speaker 1: So that's hydrogen with sulfur and oxygen and it forms

555
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 1: this molecule that is very very keen to protonate. Oh yes,

556
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: so it's it's a clear, oily liquid. It's odorless, so

557
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 1: sorry bank vault dude, both of these so far clear? Right? Yeah? Yeah?

558
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 1: Nothing green? Why why not green or orange? It's also

559
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:53,000
Speaker 1: miscable with water, which means that it forms a homogeneous

560
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 1: mixture when added to water, liberates a fair amount of heat. Um,

561
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:00,840
Speaker 1: And it's highly corrosive and dangerous to humans just across

562
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:03,960
Speaker 1: the board, much like hydrochloric acid. So how does it

563
00:31:04,040 --> 00:31:07,400
Speaker 1: compare in terms of the ratings? So hydrochloric acid, for

564
00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 1: for the health rating, we had a three, and for

565
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 1: the contact corrosivity rating we had a three, right right,

566
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 1: three on both yeah, and had a had a two

567
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: for reactivity and a zero for flammability. This time around

568
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:25,320
Speaker 1: we have another zero for flammability. Um. However, reactivity went

569
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 1: up from a two to the to a three, so

570
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:31,000
Speaker 1: we have severe water reactivity here. Uh. And then as

571
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:34,560
Speaker 1: far as health rating goes, we have another three, so

572
00:31:34,600 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 1: it's just a severe poisonous. But contact rating goes up

573
00:31:38,400 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: from three to four from severe to extreme, so it's

574
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: extremely corrosive. How do they decide what word goes with that?

575
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:49,719
Speaker 1: I might say severe is worse than extreme. Well, I

576
00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 1: don't know. It's it's going to be specific to the JT.

577
00:31:53,400 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 1: Baker s a f T data score. I guess because

578
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:57,800
Speaker 1: I need a good poet to go through and annotate

579
00:31:57,840 --> 00:32:00,320
Speaker 1: this data sheet instead of like a single like a

580
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: nice description exactly everyone encounter with it, or an example

581
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:07,520
Speaker 1: from a movie, right like this is a you know,

582
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 1: this is a Mortal Kombat two level acid. Yeah, so

583
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:13,560
Speaker 1: if you're going for this movie kind of acid, I

584
00:32:13,800 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 1: think we're we're getting more into the territory here of

585
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 1: acids that are really gonna maybe not behave exactly like

586
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 1: the movie acid you're used to, but get closer to

587
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 1: that than than many other things would right now. And

588
00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:29,400
Speaker 1: some other bad stuff about sulphuric acid. When heated to decomposition,

589
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: it produces toxic fumes of oxides of sulfur uh. It

590
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:36,400
Speaker 1: will react with water or steam to produce toxic and

591
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:40,120
Speaker 1: corrosive fumes. It reacts with the carbonates to generate carbon

592
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:44,440
Speaker 1: dioxide gas, and with cyanides and sulfides to form poisonous

593
00:32:44,600 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 1: hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen sulfide, respectively. It all sounds lovely. Yeah,

594
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:52,840
Speaker 1: So Again, that's something though that is often I don't

595
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 1: feel like that that's utilized the the the the resulting

596
00:32:56,440 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: toxic gas of acid interactions and films, like they were

597
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 1: so concerned with what happens when the xenomorph blood gets

598
00:33:04,840 --> 00:33:07,160
Speaker 1: on you or your armor or the floor, But how

599
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,120
Speaker 1: about any resulting fumes. Well, yeah, we're we're always so

600
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 1: much more concerned with liquids than with gases. One example

601
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:17,920
Speaker 1: is volcanoes in movies. You know, volcanoes in real life.

602
00:33:17,960 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 1: I think they're way more likely to suffocate and kill

603
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 1: you with gases emitted or or by covering you in

604
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 1: ash and and ejecta and stuff like that. But what

605
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:28,360
Speaker 1: you see in the movies is the lava. People are

606
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:31,600
Speaker 1: running away from liquid lava rolling down the hill towards them.

607
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: Your volcano is very likely to kill you, but it's

608
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 1: very not likely to kill you that way. Another thing

609
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:40,440
Speaker 1: that this is going off topic a little bit, but

610
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 1: flamethrowers in a confined space, it's a staple of our entertainment,

611
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 1: and yet it is such a bad idea to just

612
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:51,320
Speaker 1: rapidly consume. I mean, a flamethrower in general is a

613
00:33:51,320 --> 00:33:55,520
Speaker 1: bad idea. A real flamethrower, quick way to suffocate yourself.

614
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:57,720
Speaker 1: That's a greatay to sufocate yourself, and it's rarely rarely

615
00:33:57,800 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 1: is that explored? The only example I can think of

616
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 1: offhand is that there is a wonderful Nazi zombie film

617
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 1: from the seventies or eighties titled shock Waves, and there's

618
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,160
Speaker 1: a scene where they don't have a flamethrower, but they

619
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:14,000
Speaker 1: light some flares, I think to ward off the creatures,

620
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:16,040
Speaker 1: and they're in a confined space and it just eats

621
00:34:16,080 --> 00:34:18,600
Speaker 1: up all the oxygen and everybody's like gasping for breath.

622
00:34:18,760 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 1: And I remember the time thinking, Ah, thank you movie

623
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 1: for for for thinking a little bit. That's smart. Yeah, okay,

624
00:34:24,680 --> 00:34:28,080
Speaker 1: but back to sulfuric acid. So sulfuric acid, based on

625
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 1: how dangerous it sounds, You're you're probably never going to

626
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:33,800
Speaker 1: have this in your home, right, well, not necessarily. Now

627
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:36,440
Speaker 1: you might be able to get sulfuric acid in the

628
00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:41,960
Speaker 1: home in some deluded uh concentrations. So a n study

629
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:44,799
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery that

630
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:48,919
Speaker 1: I came across was called cutaneous burns caused by sulfuric

631
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:54,440
Speaker 1: acid drain cleaner. Yeah. Pretty horrible. So a lot of

632
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:57,120
Speaker 1: the commercial drain cleaner you're gonna be getting is actually

633
00:34:57,120 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 1: going to be based on a strong base rather than

634
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:02,239
Speaker 1: a strang long acid. So it might have something kind

635
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:05,960
Speaker 1: of like lie in it to dissolve uh, to dissolve

636
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:09,320
Speaker 1: materials and the drain to do some some alkaline hydrolysis

637
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:11,480
Speaker 1: and clear it out, get all that hair and gunk

638
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:14,839
Speaker 1: out of there. But also there are some preparations made

639
00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 1: with strong acids, such as highly concentrated solutions of sulfuric acid,

640
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 1: and and some people will sell these and you can

641
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:27,160
Speaker 1: buy them. And this has caused accidental and sometimes intentional

642
00:35:27,480 --> 00:35:31,279
Speaker 1: burns in the home. So this study looked at a

643
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:35,760
Speaker 1: period of thirteen years ending in May nine six, looking

644
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:39,719
Speaker 1: at children and adults who sustained sulfuric acid burns in

645
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:42,839
Speaker 1: the home through products like these, And it looked at

646
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 1: twenty one patients. There were thirteen kids and eight adults.

647
00:35:46,200 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 1: And I just want to read the results. They say

648
00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:52,800
Speaker 1: in eight instances the sulfuric acid burn was accidental, whereas

649
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:56,360
Speaker 1: in thirteen cases sulfuric acid was used as a weapon

650
00:35:57,120 --> 00:36:00,120
Speaker 1: media and total body surface area burned was five or

651
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 1: scent or a range of one. Approximately fifty percent of

652
00:36:05,640 --> 00:36:09,200
Speaker 1: burns involved the face and the neck. Skin grafting was

653
00:36:09,239 --> 00:36:12,879
Speaker 1: required in fourteen patients, or sixty six percent. And it's

654
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 1: estimated that nationwide, approximately three thousand injuries per year are

655
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:19,760
Speaker 1: related to drain cleaners and that one third of these

656
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 1: involved cutaneous burns. So this is, uh, this is one

657
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:28,319
Speaker 1: kind of scary fact about what sulfuric acid can do

658
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:31,880
Speaker 1: outside of the lab. And this does remind me that

659
00:36:31,960 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 1: in um, you know a lot of films and TV,

660
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 1: and and certainly in horror literature, uh, drain cleaner is

661
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:41,960
Speaker 1: often used that kind of household horror. This thing that

662
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:44,800
Speaker 1: is uh, you know, when you used correctly, is certainly

663
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:46,359
Speaker 1: just a part of our lives and we don't think

664
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:49,400
Speaker 1: about it, but if you turn it around, it becomes

665
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:52,800
Speaker 1: this horrible, in human thing. And uh, and I should

666
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:55,480
Speaker 1: also point out of view some people might have might

667
00:36:55,520 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 1: have missed this in this episode because it was kind

668
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:00,279
Speaker 1: of maybe we're bearing the lead a little bit, but uh.

669
00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:03,360
Speaker 1: The most recent Creepy posta episode The Christian and I

670
00:37:03,400 --> 00:37:07,080
Speaker 1: did gets into the into the issue of acid attacks

671
00:37:07,200 --> 00:37:11,319
Speaker 1: and the restoration of surgical restoration of individuals who have

672
00:37:11,920 --> 00:37:15,160
Speaker 1: experienced act. Yeah, so it mentions the like the grafting

673
00:37:15,239 --> 00:37:17,839
Speaker 1: that was mentioned in this study. Uh, and so yeah,

674
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:19,480
Speaker 1: I mean that's a horrible thing to think about. It

675
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:22,360
Speaker 1: in real life being used as a weapon probably doesn't

676
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:24,880
Speaker 1: behave exactly the same way we do see the movie.

677
00:37:24,920 --> 00:37:27,400
Speaker 1: Acid behaving are certainly not as rapidly, but at the

678
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: same time can cause it very severe burns and damage

679
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:34,440
Speaker 1: to the body. So it's not something to mess around with.

680
00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:37,879
Speaker 1: But next, let's look at one more rogue in our

681
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:40,319
Speaker 1: in our rogues gallery of dangerous acids, and I think

682
00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: this one is going to be one of the most interesting.

683
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:46,080
Speaker 1: This is hydrofluoric acid or h F, made of a

684
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:49,920
Speaker 1: bond of hydrogen and fluorine. Let's look at the MSDS

685
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 1: scores here on this one. So health rating. Our previous

686
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:57,319
Speaker 1: two examples were both three, which were severe. This one

687
00:37:57,360 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 1: is a four. This one is extremely poisonous. Uh. This

688
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:05,240
Speaker 1: one also has a zero on flammability. Uh. Its reactivity

689
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:08,040
Speaker 1: rating is a mere two, so that's down from three

690
00:38:08,560 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 1: that we had on sulphuric acid. And then it's contact

691
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:16,240
Speaker 1: rating is a four extremely corrosive just like sulfuric acid. Yeah,

692
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:19,640
Speaker 1: so it's a colorless fuming liquid. Uh. It has a

693
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:24,399
Speaker 1: very very acrid odor. Do not breathe the fumes, and

694
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 1: it is infinitely soluble. Now, this this stuff because of

695
00:38:29,320 --> 00:38:33,360
Speaker 1: the nature of it, the hydrogen fluorine bond or the

696
00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:38,080
Speaker 1: hydrogen fluoride, it has a very unique sort of reactive

697
00:38:38,120 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 1: profile that's right on contact with metals. It liberates hydrogen

698
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:46,000
Speaker 1: gas on heating to decomposition. It can yield toxic fumes

699
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:51,000
Speaker 1: of fluorides, and it attacks glass and other silicon containing compounds.

700
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 1: It reacts with silica to produce silicon tetrafluoride, which is

701
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 1: also a hazardous colorless gas. Yeah. Now we should linger

702
00:38:58,680 --> 00:39:01,360
Speaker 1: on that last fact for a moment, because what do

703
00:39:01,480 --> 00:39:06,000
Speaker 1: we say here, Hydrogen fluoride can dissolve glass. Yeah, most

704
00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:08,719
Speaker 1: of the time. Glass is great for storing chemicals because

705
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:11,160
Speaker 1: it's very nonreactive. You can put stuff in a glass

706
00:39:11,200 --> 00:39:13,440
Speaker 1: container and it will sit there. It doesn't it doesn't

707
00:39:13,480 --> 00:39:16,720
Speaker 1: react with what's inside it. Glass is made of mostly

708
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 1: silicon dioxide silica, same stuff as you know a lot

709
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:24,520
Speaker 1: of rocks and sand, But hydrogen fluoride smashes up those

710
00:39:24,520 --> 00:39:28,640
Speaker 1: silicon dioxide bonds in order to replace them. With silicon

711
00:39:28,760 --> 00:39:32,840
Speaker 1: fluorine bonds, and so for this reason you can't store

712
00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:34,239
Speaker 1: it in glass. You have to store it in a

713
00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:37,480
Speaker 1: special container, often one made out of something that won't

714
00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: react with it, like polyethylene plastic, but a few other

715
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:44,799
Speaker 1: materials will work. And I wanted to talk about a

716
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:47,680
Speaker 1: couple of videos that I found on the Internet that

717
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:51,040
Speaker 1: are very interesting dealing with hydrogen fluoride. And if you

718
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:52,960
Speaker 1: want to watch these, if you're in a physician, to

719
00:39:53,040 --> 00:39:55,880
Speaker 1: watch these as you listen to the podcast episode. We

720
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: will include links to these in the landing page for

721
00:39:58,200 --> 00:39:59,759
Speaker 1: this episode is stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

722
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 1: So these were done by a group that puts out

723
00:40:03,280 --> 00:40:06,880
Speaker 1: chemistry videos on the Internet called periodic videos or periodic

724
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:09,920
Speaker 1: table videos. It's out of believe the Chemistry Department of

725
00:40:10,040 --> 00:40:12,480
Speaker 1: University of Nottingham, and there are a lot of fun

726
00:40:12,520 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: They do some experiments with some very unsettling chemicals. One

727
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:20,560
Speaker 1: of them was hydrogen fluoride, where they they decided to

728
00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:22,879
Speaker 1: put a light bulb in the hydrogen fluoride. So it's

729
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:25,680
Speaker 1: a live light bulb with power running to it, lighting

730
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:29,719
Speaker 1: up half submerged in a container of hydrogen fluoride. And

731
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:32,279
Speaker 1: what do you know, after a little while sitting in

732
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:36,080
Speaker 1: the solution, the glass part of the light bulb breaks off,

733
00:40:36,200 --> 00:40:38,880
Speaker 1: and it breaks off in a very strange way, cleanly,

734
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:42,640
Speaker 1: with a circle around where the surface of the acid

735
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: is is lining the outside of the glass bulb, and

736
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:48,920
Speaker 1: it just kind of shears it off as if it

737
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:52,120
Speaker 1: had been scored and then removed. And that, of course

738
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 1: is pretty freakingly freaky because then the filament immediately comes

739
00:40:56,040 --> 00:40:58,480
Speaker 1: off and it starts kind of sparking. But then they

740
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 1: did another video which I thought was really interesting, and

741
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:04,320
Speaker 1: this one's really worth a watch. So this is comparing

742
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:08,319
Speaker 1: the flesh dissolving properties of three different acids, actually the

743
00:41:08,360 --> 00:41:10,920
Speaker 1: three we've just talked about. This is the one I watched,

744
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:13,400
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, this is a lot of it's fantastic.

745
00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:15,759
Speaker 1: So in all three cases, what they did is they

746
00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:18,879
Speaker 1: got a raw chicken leg and they suspended it from

747
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:22,520
Speaker 1: a string partially submerged in the acid. Uh, And then

748
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:25,520
Speaker 1: the states of the three chicken legs are monitored. And

749
00:41:25,560 --> 00:41:27,160
Speaker 1: the three acids they did, like we said, are the

750
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:31,160
Speaker 1: ones we've just talked about, hydrogen chloride or HCl, sulfuric

751
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:34,120
Speaker 1: acid or H two s O four and then hydrofluoric

752
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:38,840
Speaker 1: acid or HF. Now, the the sort of the profile

753
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:41,920
Speaker 1: we saw affecting the chicken leg was very similar for

754
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:45,200
Speaker 1: the hydrogen chloride and the sulfuric acid, wouldn't you say, yes,

755
00:41:45,719 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 1: uh yeah, they seem to do the same thing, which

756
00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:51,240
Speaker 1: is that after about five minutes, not really any noticeable changes.

757
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:53,960
Speaker 1: I'm sure if that chicken leg could feel it probably

758
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:57,280
Speaker 1: wouldn't feel good, But you don't really notice any burning

759
00:41:57,280 --> 00:42:01,360
Speaker 1: on the outside. After thirty minutes, still nothing really noticeable.

760
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:04,759
Speaker 1: So this already is not exactly lining up with what

761
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 1: we know about movie acid right right, And these are

762
00:42:07,200 --> 00:42:11,839
Speaker 1: best in our brightest ATHLETs, yeah, exactly. But overnight some

763
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:14,680
Speaker 1: really interesting stuff started to happen with these two. So

764
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:19,400
Speaker 1: the previously clear solution takes on a dark pigment, and

765
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:21,799
Speaker 1: the part of the chicken that has been submerged has

766
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:26,279
Speaker 1: turned into this dark, viscous jelly that drips off of

767
00:42:26,320 --> 00:42:29,720
Speaker 1: the bone when you lifted up. Uh. And then after

768
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:31,480
Speaker 1: that they went a whole hog where they cut the

769
00:42:31,520 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 1: string and just dunked the whole chicken leg in and

770
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:37,600
Speaker 1: it's gross. It just continues to darken the acid solution,

771
00:42:37,719 --> 00:42:41,560
Speaker 1: turn it into this gloopy, dark and jelly, and it

772
00:42:41,719 --> 00:42:44,560
Speaker 1: it sort of begins to liquify the outer layers of

773
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:47,160
Speaker 1: the chicken leg. Don't know what what would have happened

774
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:50,720
Speaker 1: if they just kept it going for weeks after after

775
00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:55,480
Speaker 1: a day, it was not looking good. It was thoroughly unappetizing,

776
00:42:56,320 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 1: that is for sure. Yeah, I don't know. People just

777
00:42:58,560 --> 00:43:00,960
Speaker 1: don't for some reason, you want to eat a piece

778
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:02,880
Speaker 1: of chicken. You don't want to eat some chicken jelly,

779
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:07,000
Speaker 1: but yet you like grape jelly. Yeah, well, um, well

780
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:09,880
Speaker 1: there you know, there are different jellifications of flesh that

781
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:13,440
Speaker 1: are consumed arthur in like French cuisine. Oh I suppose so, yeah,

782
00:43:13,520 --> 00:43:18,239
Speaker 1: that's right. What's it called aspect? Yeah? Okay, moving on

783
00:43:18,280 --> 00:43:21,400
Speaker 1: now now, So that's hydrogen chloride and sulfuric acid. But

784
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:25,960
Speaker 1: the real strange one contributing here is the hydrofluoric acid,

785
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:27,839
Speaker 1: this being the one that we just covered, the one

786
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:31,760
Speaker 1: that dissolves glass. Yeah, and so similar profile at the beginning.

787
00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:36,120
Speaker 1: After five to thirty minutes, really not any significant observed changes.

788
00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:39,359
Speaker 1: Like we said, probably if you could be that chicken leg,

789
00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:41,680
Speaker 1: it would not be pleasant. But just looking at it,

790
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:45,839
Speaker 1: nothing strange seems to have occurred, but again, overnight, some

791
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:49,200
Speaker 1: really crazy stuff starts to happen. Unlike the other two

792
00:43:49,239 --> 00:43:53,680
Speaker 1: acid solutions, which darkened and took on the red red pigment, uh,

793
00:43:53,719 --> 00:43:57,040
Speaker 1: this acid solution remains clear, and the part of the

794
00:43:57,120 --> 00:44:00,400
Speaker 1: chicken legs submerged in the acid has sort of partially

795
00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 1: disappeared and has a white discoloration along the sheared away surface.

796
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 1: It looked to me, I don't know what you thought

797
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:11,359
Speaker 1: about this. It looked to me like frost or freezer burn. Yeah, yeah,

798
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:13,399
Speaker 1: I did have that kind of appearance. Yeah. And then

799
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:16,759
Speaker 1: also the entire rest of the leg has become discolored,

800
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:19,279
Speaker 1: so all of the red pigment and the muscle it

801
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 1: looks like it's just been drained away. And even the

802
00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 1: part way up out of the acid has become pale

803
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:29,879
Speaker 1: white with greenish spots. It's lost its pink pigment. Uh.

804
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:32,439
Speaker 1: And then after they dropped the whole thing and when

805
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:36,520
Speaker 1: they cut the string, it looks almost like extremely overcooked

806
00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:40,319
Speaker 1: boiled chicken, pale white all over except for a little

807
00:44:40,360 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 1: part sticking out which looks green and disease like they

808
00:44:43,600 --> 00:44:47,640
Speaker 1: just the worst example of steamer tray lunch room chicken.

809
00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:50,759
Speaker 1: Legs you can possibly imagine. Yeah, and so I do

810
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:54,439
Speaker 1: recommend the the video because the chemist who they talked

811
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:57,600
Speaker 1: to in the video has a theory about why this happens.

812
00:44:57,760 --> 00:44:59,920
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to repeat his theory, but it's

813
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:02,960
Speaker 1: worth checking out. It's pretty interesting. He also has wonderful

814
00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:08,000
Speaker 1: like frizzy white hair. He's just a fabulous example of

815
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:10,680
Speaker 1: of a British scientist. Yeah, all right, we're gonna take

816
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:12,399
Speaker 1: a quick break and when we come back, we will

817
00:45:12,400 --> 00:45:15,080
Speaker 1: get into the realm of super acids and then we

818
00:45:15,160 --> 00:45:20,239
Speaker 1: will reconverge with the Zeno morph. Hey, everybody, trips to

819
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:23,000
Speaker 1: the post office are never convenient, so why not get

820
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:25,920
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821
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822
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823
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824
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825
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826
00:45:40,360 --> 00:45:43,719
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827
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: you just hand the mail off to the mail carrier

828
00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:48,399
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829
00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:51,160
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830
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831
00:45:54,920 --> 00:45:56,839
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832
00:45:56,840 --> 00:45:59,239
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833
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834
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:02,960
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837
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838
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839
00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:16,839
Speaker 1: dot com right now, before we do anything else, click

840
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:18,560
Speaker 1: on the microphone at the top of the homepage and

841
00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:21,880
Speaker 1: type in stuff that stamps dot com inter stuff and

842
00:46:21,960 --> 00:46:29,520
Speaker 1: start mailing things. Okay, here's a question. When does an

843
00:46:29,560 --> 00:46:33,239
Speaker 1: acid become a super acid? We've talked about superheroes at

844
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:35,839
Speaker 1: the beginning of Batman is a Is he a hero

845
00:46:36,040 --> 00:46:38,840
Speaker 1: or superhero? Well, he doesn't really have superpowers, but I

846
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:40,680
Speaker 1: guess he counts as a superhero. Oh yeah, he's got

847
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:43,879
Speaker 1: the costume, he's got the technology. So yeah, maybe if

848
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:46,799
Speaker 1: these other acids we just discussed dissolving chicken legs won't

849
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 1: dissolve a Batman fast enough, you need a super acid

850
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:52,759
Speaker 1: to dissolve a superhero. It seems like the kind of

851
00:46:52,760 --> 00:46:55,800
Speaker 1: thing is super villain would need to to look into exactly.

852
00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:58,719
Speaker 1: So what is a super acid? Well, super acid is

853
00:46:58,760 --> 00:47:01,759
Speaker 1: an acid that is as strong as or stronger than,

854
00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:06,759
Speaker 1: one hundred percent pure sulfuric acid. Uh, And why would

855
00:47:06,840 --> 00:47:10,319
Speaker 1: you ever have anything like this? What's the point of it? Well,

856
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:14,000
Speaker 1: acids are an incredibly important catalyst in the chemical industry,

857
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:16,200
Speaker 1: which is maybe why they're in you know, these industrial

858
00:47:16,200 --> 00:47:19,520
Speaker 1: settings and big open vets, but they have they have

859
00:47:19,719 --> 00:47:23,080
Speaker 1: a number of applications and potential applications in fuel cell

860
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:27,000
Speaker 1: technology and the chemical and petroleum industry. So, for instance,

861
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:30,600
Speaker 1: acids don't usually react with hydrocarbons you know, such as

862
00:47:30,680 --> 00:47:35,160
Speaker 1: oil petroleum, but superacids do. Yeah, And so we figured

863
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:38,839
Speaker 1: it's worth looking up what's the strongest acid known to humankind?

864
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:41,799
Speaker 1: There is an answer to this question, right, It is

865
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:46,359
Speaker 1: fluoro antimonic acid or h s b F six. Then

866
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:49,400
Speaker 1: this is, as far as we know, the strongest super

867
00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:51,920
Speaker 1: acid on earth. So what's the deal with it? So

868
00:47:51,920 --> 00:47:56,759
Speaker 1: this is made by combining hydrofluoric acid with antimony pentafluoride.

869
00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:01,520
Speaker 1: And this is gonna sound crazy, but it the resulting

870
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 1: acid is billions of times stronger than sulfuric acid. Yeah,

871
00:48:07,080 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 1: it's billions and billions of times or just many orders

872
00:48:10,560 --> 00:48:15,080
Speaker 1: of magnitude stronger than sulfuric acid. That is crazy, obviously

873
00:48:15,640 --> 00:48:19,000
Speaker 1: something we don't exactly know. Like, I couldn't find any

874
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:24,000
Speaker 1: videos that were clearly real of people dealing with this stuff.

875
00:48:24,320 --> 00:48:26,600
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a lot of first person accounts of

876
00:48:26,640 --> 00:48:29,880
Speaker 1: people dealing with it. There there's some some research materials

877
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:32,880
Speaker 1: about it, but they don't really get into, uh, into

878
00:48:32,920 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 1: what exactly would happen by combining this with stuff. I

879
00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:39,399
Speaker 1: imagine if you dipped a batman in it, some some

880
00:48:39,520 --> 00:48:42,360
Speaker 1: stuff would go down. Yeah, I mean, we found numbers

881
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:44,680
Speaker 1: that were kind of all over the place, and there's

882
00:48:44,719 --> 00:48:47,320
Speaker 1: no MSDS score for this. There's no s A f

883
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 1: T data on this, so we can't we can't even

884
00:48:49,719 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 1: like look at numbers that put it, uh, you know,

885
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 1: to make a comparison between it and sulfuric acid. Right,

886
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:59,080
Speaker 1: But just based on on what we do know about it,

887
00:48:59,120 --> 00:49:01,600
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to assume that this stuff is

888
00:49:01,680 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous and dipping a Batman and it would have

889
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:10,080
Speaker 1: some some consequences. But but you might be wondering, you know,

890
00:49:10,080 --> 00:49:13,759
Speaker 1: with some with an acid that's strong, something that that reactive,

891
00:49:14,640 --> 00:49:17,879
Speaker 1: how would you even store it? Right? Because just the hydrogen, Uh,

892
00:49:18,200 --> 00:49:21,080
Speaker 1: just with the HF you've got this problem where you

893
00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:25,440
Speaker 1: you you're dissolving glass containers. Uh so what do you

894
00:49:25,560 --> 00:49:28,360
Speaker 1: use to store this wasn't an interesting piece of information

895
00:49:28,400 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: I found cited in several sources. You can actually store

896
00:49:32,120 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 1: it with something you keep around the house. It's something

897
00:49:34,719 --> 00:49:37,360
Speaker 1: with a solid bond that really doesn't want to let

898
00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:41,320
Speaker 1: go and bond with other stuff. It's teflon ptf E,

899
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:45,560
Speaker 1: so polytetrafluora ethylene. It's a ptf E and that's just

900
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:51,279
Speaker 1: a fluorine carbon bond molecule. That's it's it's very monogamous.

901
00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:55,480
Speaker 1: It just doesn't want to go bond with other stuff. Interesting, Okright,

902
00:49:55,520 --> 00:49:59,160
Speaker 1: So if you are battling a lizard ninja that may

903
00:49:59,239 --> 00:50:02,840
Speaker 1: or may not have of um super acid in its body,

904
00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:07,239
Speaker 1: where teflon ninja costume to battle it? Exactly? That's what

905
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:11,400
Speaker 1: Batman uses, I bet sustain his encounters with vats of acid.

906
00:50:11,520 --> 00:50:14,920
Speaker 1: Is a teflon batsuit. So this would be what mcbaine's

907
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:17,400
Speaker 1: underwear was made off in that that scene we were

908
00:50:17,400 --> 00:50:19,319
Speaker 1: talking about from The Simpsons, because when the flood of

909
00:50:19,360 --> 00:50:24,400
Speaker 1: acid and throws him through I think Millhouse's um trailer,

910
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:27,720
Speaker 1: the acid like quickly eats off all of his clothing

911
00:50:27,800 --> 00:50:30,440
Speaker 1: except for his underwear. Yeah. Well, I'm sure that was

912
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:36,000
Speaker 1: done for network censorship reasons rather than than scientific accuracy reasons,

913
00:50:36,239 --> 00:50:39,440
Speaker 1: but it could be. Could be uh teflon underwear protects

914
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:41,320
Speaker 1: you from the acid. Though I don't know if that

915
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:44,600
Speaker 1: would work with every acid. That's true. I just have

916
00:50:44,719 --> 00:50:47,120
Speaker 1: to assume if it works for the strongest acid in

917
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 1: the world, it's going to be generally pretty effective. Alright, So, Joe,

918
00:50:50,640 --> 00:50:53,440
Speaker 1: at this point, we've we've talked about what Hollywood acids

919
00:50:53,480 --> 00:50:56,800
Speaker 1: look like, we've talked about the real properties of acids,

920
00:50:56,960 --> 00:50:59,560
Speaker 1: and we're already seeing how they don't really match up

921
00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:03,640
Speaker 1: to our Batman dissolving needs. Doesn't mean they're not dangerous.

922
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:06,279
Speaker 1: Some of that are certainly incredibly dangerous, but they don't

923
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: behave exactly like we we want them to to make

924
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:19,440
Speaker 1: Batman burn. Well, are there other things in our natural

925
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:24,560
Speaker 1: world that do behave like these fictionalized substances. Well, still

926
00:51:24,640 --> 00:51:27,240
Speaker 1: probably not exactly. You're not going to get the green, bubbling,

927
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:30,720
Speaker 1: instant dissolving you kind of thing. But in many cases,

928
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:33,359
Speaker 1: I think if you want a chemical that burns through

929
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:37,000
Speaker 1: human flesh more like it does in the movies, what

930
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 1: you want is not necessarily a strong acid, but a

931
00:51:39,560 --> 00:51:42,800
Speaker 1: strong base on the opposite end of the pH scale,

932
00:51:43,520 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 1: such as LIE, which would be usually sodium hydroxide in

933
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:51,800
Speaker 1: a O H or potassium hydroxide KOH. And so I

934
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:54,919
Speaker 1: wanna bring to your mind a scene from a movie

935
00:51:54,960 --> 00:51:58,600
Speaker 1: you might or might not have seen. You've seen Fight Club, right, Oh, yes,

936
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:01,839
Speaker 1: you remember the scene in Fight Club where Brad Pitt

937
00:52:01,920 --> 00:52:04,479
Speaker 1: and Edward Norton they're sitting around a table and they're

938
00:52:04,560 --> 00:52:07,480
Speaker 1: making soap, because this is a plot point in the movie,

939
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:10,120
Speaker 1: and one of the ingredients in making soap, and this

940
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:13,359
Speaker 1: is true, is LIE. And in the scene, Brad Pitt

941
00:52:13,480 --> 00:52:16,040
Speaker 1: he takes Edward Norton's hand and he kisses him on

942
00:52:16,120 --> 00:52:19,279
Speaker 1: the hand and then he pours LIE across the wet

943
00:52:19,360 --> 00:52:23,240
Speaker 1: spot where his lips were, and this causes a reaction

944
00:52:23,600 --> 00:52:26,200
Speaker 1: that begins to burn Edward Norton's hand, and for the

945
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:29,320
Speaker 1: sake of, you know, kind of macho and somewhat grandiose

946
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:32,719
Speaker 1: sense of carpet d M. Brad Pitt convinces Edward Norton

947
00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:35,160
Speaker 1: to just sit there and endure the pain the chemical

948
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 1: burn instead of washing off the LIE, and he also

949
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:41,440
Speaker 1: tells him that washing it off with water would only

950
00:52:41,520 --> 00:52:44,759
Speaker 1: make it worse, and eventually he uses vinegar to neutralize

951
00:52:44,800 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 1: the acid. Now, you shouldn't take your chemical safety information

952
00:52:48,800 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 1: from a podcast. We are not chemical safety experts, and

953
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:54,120
Speaker 1: you should always consult those real experts before dealing with

954
00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:57,080
Speaker 1: strong acids or bases. But from everything I've read, brad

955
00:52:57,160 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 1: Pitt's wisdom about the vinegar here is not exactly true. Uh.

956
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:03,320
Speaker 1: It is true that a strong base like LIE is

957
00:53:03,400 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 1: activated in the presence of water, and that you can

958
00:53:06,400 --> 00:53:09,879
Speaker 1: use acids to neutralize bases. But if you've got LIE

959
00:53:10,040 --> 00:53:13,080
Speaker 1: on you, my non expert opinion is that your first

960
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:15,520
Speaker 1: priorities just get it off. You get it off your

961
00:53:15,560 --> 00:53:18,560
Speaker 1: skin as fast as possible, rather than running around looking

962
00:53:18,600 --> 00:53:21,160
Speaker 1: for a creative lemons to squeeze on and neutralize it.

963
00:53:21,680 --> 00:53:23,640
Speaker 1: Washing it off with water would be one way, but

964
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:26,520
Speaker 1: you just want it off your skin as fast as possible.

965
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:31,120
Speaker 1: Also worth pointing out that commercial vinegar is mostly water.

966
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:35,359
Speaker 1: It's acetic acid, but it's highly diluted with water. But yes,

967
00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 1: in any case, this is an example of what strong

968
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 1: bases can do to the skin, and in some ways

969
00:53:41,719 --> 00:53:44,319
Speaker 1: the scene is kind of accurate. Like a strong base,

970
00:53:44,440 --> 00:53:46,279
Speaker 1: like a lie in the presence of water on the skin,

971
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:50,200
Speaker 1: can definitely burn you. It can cause bad chemical burns,

972
00:53:50,880 --> 00:53:55,120
Speaker 1: and can definitely truly dissolve human flesh under the right conditions.

973
00:53:55,600 --> 00:53:58,160
Speaker 1: So this is one thing we also see the movie

974
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: acid being used for. It's like the Afia hitman in

975
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:03,680
Speaker 1: the movie have some vat of acid in their basement

976
00:54:04,160 --> 00:54:06,640
Speaker 1: and they wax somebody and they put him into the

977
00:54:06,719 --> 00:54:10,040
Speaker 1: vat of acid and it dissolves them. But studies have

978
00:54:10,120 --> 00:54:12,840
Speaker 1: actually shown that if you really want to dissolve a

979
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:15,279
Speaker 1: human body. We're not trying to give anybody pointers on

980
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:17,840
Speaker 1: how to commit murder, and this is evidence is just

981
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:23,919
Speaker 1: science presented by the Mafia Science Institute. Apparently the better

982
00:54:24,040 --> 00:54:26,160
Speaker 1: way to do that would be with a strong base

983
00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:29,360
Speaker 1: rather than a strong acid for for fully dissolving flesh.

984
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:32,319
Speaker 1: And one piece of evidence for this is something we've

985
00:54:32,320 --> 00:54:35,400
Speaker 1: actually talked about on the podcast before and you remember

986
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:37,920
Speaker 1: the episode we did last October about the future of

987
00:54:38,080 --> 00:54:42,600
Speaker 1: the dealing with human remains and green burials and stuff

988
00:54:42,640 --> 00:54:45,439
Speaker 1: like that, and so the method, one method we talked

989
00:54:45,480 --> 00:54:48,040
Speaker 1: about is known as alkaline hydrolysis, and this is a

990
00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:50,840
Speaker 1: method of disposing of condevers. It's used by lots of

991
00:54:50,920 --> 00:54:54,359
Speaker 1: medical facilities and there's increasing interest in using it as

992
00:54:54,400 --> 00:54:58,880
Speaker 1: a cheaper and greener alternative to traditional burial incremation. And

993
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 1: essentially it goes like us. You put the body into

994
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 1: a pressurized chamber that contains a mixture of water and

995
00:55:05,120 --> 00:55:07,919
Speaker 1: lie so here's your strong base, and then you heat

996
00:55:07,960 --> 00:55:10,680
Speaker 1: the chamber to around a hundred and sixty degrease celsius

997
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:13,759
Speaker 1: or you know, over three degrees fahrenheit, and the body

998
00:55:13,880 --> 00:55:16,080
Speaker 1: is liquefied in just a few hours and it can

999
00:55:16,080 --> 00:55:19,600
Speaker 1: be washed down the drain and any remaining bone fragments

1000
00:55:19,640 --> 00:55:21,960
Speaker 1: that can be pulverized and dealt with however you want.

1001
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:24,920
Speaker 1: But now, obviously the heat and the pressure here are

1002
00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:26,960
Speaker 1: playing a big role in what's going on. But the

1003
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:30,640
Speaker 1: strong base is crucial. It's an m v P dissolver

1004
00:55:31,200 --> 00:55:34,759
Speaker 1: of organic materials such as a human body or or

1005
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:37,759
Speaker 1: an animal carcass or a Batman. And so one of

1006
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:41,880
Speaker 1: my suggestions is that maybe we should start replacing movie

1007
00:55:41,960 --> 00:55:45,200
Speaker 1: acids in our fiction with movie bases. I think part

1008
00:55:45,239 --> 00:55:49,279
Speaker 1: of the problem is that acid sounds cooler. Acid is

1009
00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 1: more even though I think most people know that you

1010
00:55:52,560 --> 00:55:55,759
Speaker 1: have acids and bases. Uh, it's like the just the

1011
00:55:55,840 --> 00:56:00,360
Speaker 1: word itself acid, Yeah, instead of like base, you know,

1012
00:56:00,600 --> 00:56:04,239
Speaker 1: like which one which one is just like linguistically potent? Yeah,

1013
00:56:04,560 --> 00:56:07,440
Speaker 1: for for fictional purposes, which one sounds scarier? To be

1014
00:56:07,560 --> 00:56:11,840
Speaker 1: protonated or to be deprotonated? Yeah, And then of course acid.

1015
00:56:11,960 --> 00:56:13,719
Speaker 1: I mean we talk about, oh, well that person has

1016
00:56:13,760 --> 00:56:16,800
Speaker 1: a really you know, acidic attitude or something. You know,

1017
00:56:16,840 --> 00:56:19,160
Speaker 1: it's like it's we we Acid is just going to

1018
00:56:19,280 --> 00:56:21,759
Speaker 1: make your sentence that much stronger. It's gonna make your

1019
00:56:21,840 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 1: threat to the superhero that much stronger. Yeah, it's it's

1020
00:56:24,760 --> 00:56:27,040
Speaker 1: it has more resonance, despite the fact that it might

1021
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:30,680
Speaker 1: not be as great a wonderful dissolver of organic material

1022
00:56:30,840 --> 00:56:34,719
Speaker 1: or something like lie. But yeah, I'm ready Robert for

1023
00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:37,480
Speaker 1: you to take us back to the Nostromo. All right, Well,

1024
00:56:37,640 --> 00:56:40,200
Speaker 1: you know the my motion detector is going off here.

1025
00:56:42,280 --> 00:56:44,200
Speaker 1: I think it's actually coming from inside the room at

1026
00:56:44,239 --> 00:56:47,239
Speaker 1: this point. So yeah, let's let's talk about the xenomore. Yeah, okay,

1027
00:56:47,320 --> 00:56:49,480
Speaker 1: so we mentioned this earlier in the episode. This is

1028
00:56:49,600 --> 00:56:52,640
Speaker 1: one fantastic example of movie acid. I think it's probably

1029
00:56:52,719 --> 00:56:55,680
Speaker 1: my favorite movie acid is the Aliens Blood right, Yeah.

1030
00:56:55,719 --> 00:56:58,120
Speaker 1: I mean it's so well utilized and uh and and

1031
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:01,000
Speaker 1: feels like a real threat and helps to just position

1032
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:03,960
Speaker 1: the creature. You know, we can barely touch it, we

1033
00:57:04,040 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: can barely wound it in. When we do wounding, it

1034
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:08,880
Speaker 1: might kill us. Yeah. So we've described sort of what

1035
00:57:09,040 --> 00:57:11,040
Speaker 1: happens in the scene in the first scene where they

1036
00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:13,080
Speaker 1: use that. There there are many different ways the asset

1037
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:15,759
Speaker 1: appears throughout all of the movies that have Aliens in them,

1038
00:57:16,440 --> 00:57:19,960
Speaker 1: but it typically always burns and dissolves things. It's it's

1039
00:57:20,040 --> 00:57:21,480
Speaker 1: you don't want to get it on you. It might

1040
00:57:21,640 --> 00:57:24,840
Speaker 1: kill you, might burn you. But is there anything we

1041
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:27,480
Speaker 1: can relate this acid too in the real world? Could

1042
00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:30,600
Speaker 1: an organism really behave this way? And what might it's

1043
00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:35,120
Speaker 1: acid blood be? Ah? Well, this is a fantastic question. Um,

1044
00:57:36,040 --> 00:57:38,120
Speaker 1: But before I get into it, I do want to

1045
00:57:38,200 --> 00:57:41,520
Speaker 1: mention that, as a fun note, there is an older monster,

1046
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:46,120
Speaker 1: perhaps the most famous monster in Western literature that also

1047
00:57:46,200 --> 00:57:51,400
Speaker 1: boasted corrosive blood, and that's Grindel. Oh wow, Yeah, it's

1048
00:57:51,440 --> 00:57:54,400
Speaker 1: been so long since I've read from Bayol. It's been song, Yes,

1049
00:57:54,440 --> 00:57:57,200
Speaker 1: since I've read Bao Wolf. I've certainly read things since

1050
00:57:57,280 --> 00:57:59,560
Speaker 1: then that have Grendel in them, but it's been so

1051
00:57:59,640 --> 00:58:01,560
Speaker 1: long I didn't I didn't even realize this. I had

1052
00:58:01,600 --> 00:58:03,800
Speaker 1: sort of rediscovered this in our research. This is crazy.

1053
00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:05,680
Speaker 1: So of course be a Wolf is a classic of

1054
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:09,320
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon literature Old English literature, where you know you've

1055
00:58:09,320 --> 00:58:12,040
Speaker 1: got this epic. The hero Beowolf goes into slay the

1056
00:58:12,120 --> 00:58:15,479
Speaker 1: monster that's been harassing this Uh. I don't know, would

1057
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 1: you even call it a town, this encampment of humans? Uh?

1058
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:21,000
Speaker 1: And so what's the deal? So he goes into slay

1059
00:58:21,080 --> 00:58:24,400
Speaker 1: Grendel and he encounters some acid blood. Yeah, but basically

1060
00:58:24,600 --> 00:58:26,920
Speaker 1: like he ends up getting this special sword and then

1061
00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:30,320
Speaker 1: at the end he's earlier, He rips off Grindel's arm,

1062
00:58:30,600 --> 00:58:33,400
Speaker 1: wounds him, follows Grindel back to his layer, cuts his

1063
00:58:33,480 --> 00:58:36,360
Speaker 1: head off, and then the blood from the from the

1064
00:58:37,040 --> 00:58:40,440
Speaker 1: beheading it melts the blade. This is a translation, obviously,

1065
00:58:40,760 --> 00:58:44,480
Speaker 1: but the sword blade began then the blood having touched it,

1066
00:58:44,760 --> 00:58:49,600
Speaker 1: contracting and shriveling with battle icicles towards a wonderful marvel

1067
00:58:49,800 --> 00:58:53,680
Speaker 1: that had melted entirely. So it's my understanding that you

1068
00:58:53,760 --> 00:58:56,240
Speaker 1: could kind of interpret this as maybe as blood really

1069
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:58,840
Speaker 1: hot and just melted it um, you know, as in

1070
00:58:58,960 --> 00:59:02,440
Speaker 1: a you know, a great fire, or that it's acidic,

1071
00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:06,160
Speaker 1: depending on your interpretation. Either way, that's that's quite uh

1072
00:59:06,320 --> 00:59:09,600
Speaker 1: an adaptation on the part of the Grindel organism. Oh man,

1073
00:59:09,720 --> 00:59:13,640
Speaker 1: I wonder if this is the oldest single version of

1074
00:59:13,760 --> 00:59:18,320
Speaker 1: the creature that spits toxic chemicals maybe, you know, I can't,

1075
00:59:18,920 --> 00:59:23,200
Speaker 1: I can't think of another mythic creature that has this fire.

1076
00:59:23,480 --> 00:59:26,360
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's certainly fire breathing, but as far as

1077
00:59:26,640 --> 00:59:31,000
Speaker 1: acids or something that is corrosive that is, you know,

1078
00:59:31,160 --> 00:59:33,560
Speaker 1: destroying the weapons that are used against it, I can't

1079
00:59:33,560 --> 00:59:38,240
Speaker 1: think of one offhand. Yeah. Crazy. Well, anyway, we we

1080
00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:42,040
Speaker 1: should return to our modern example though, So imagine Beowulf

1081
00:59:42,120 --> 00:59:45,480
Speaker 1: goes into slay a xenomorph. He'd have exactly the same problem, right,

1082
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:48,120
Speaker 1: the xenomorph queens in there. She's been harassing the town.

1083
00:59:48,200 --> 00:59:50,520
Speaker 1: He takes in his special sword. He lops off its

1084
00:59:50,640 --> 00:59:54,439
Speaker 1: head and the sword melts. Right, Yes, the sword melts

1085
00:59:54,480 --> 00:59:56,680
Speaker 1: and you got the job done. But yeah, your your

1086
00:59:56,760 --> 00:59:59,800
Speaker 1: magical weapon is ruined. Yeah, maybe spraying him on the

1087
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:02,640
Speaker 1: as in the process and killing him getting the last

1088
01:00:02,720 --> 01:00:05,400
Speaker 1: laugh after all. Oh yeah, well you know it's Beowulf.

1089
01:00:05,520 --> 01:00:07,960
Speaker 1: They probably dodge it. I always have this thing, I

1090
01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:11,400
Speaker 1: always since sympathize with Grendel. Uh yet to see an

1091
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:14,840
Speaker 1: adaptation of the story where I'm like, oh, yeah, Beawolf

1092
01:00:14,880 --> 01:00:16,360
Speaker 1: is a good dude, I can get behind him. I

1093
01:00:16,440 --> 01:00:20,200
Speaker 1: always sympathize with the monster. Well, I mean, yeah, Grendel's

1094
01:00:20,240 --> 01:00:23,600
Speaker 1: the loner. Well, maybe one of the first places we

1095
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:26,840
Speaker 1: should look to see what what the aliens blood might

1096
01:00:26,920 --> 01:00:28,760
Speaker 1: be would be to look behind the scenes in the

1097
01:00:28,840 --> 01:00:30,800
Speaker 1: movie and see, okay, so how do they create the

1098
01:00:30,800 --> 01:00:33,080
Speaker 1: special effect in the In the alien movies, you see

1099
01:00:33,080 --> 01:00:35,920
Speaker 1: the aliens spilled their blood like in the first movie.

1100
01:00:36,360 --> 01:00:38,560
Speaker 1: In Ridley Scott's film, you see it spill on the floor.

1101
01:00:38,640 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 1: It burns through the floor, and it just keeps burning

1102
01:00:41,080 --> 01:00:44,760
Speaker 1: through floors until finally it stops. What what was going

1103
01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:48,320
Speaker 1: on there? Well? I found some accounts online of the

1104
01:00:48,880 --> 01:00:51,160
Speaker 1: where this special effect came from, and supposedly It was

1105
01:00:51,320 --> 01:00:56,480
Speaker 1: created by the Alien special effects supervisor Brian Johnson, and

1106
01:00:56,840 --> 01:01:01,720
Speaker 1: the the acid effect was essentially a combination of some

1107
01:01:01,960 --> 01:01:05,640
Speaker 1: various chemicals and then that was applied to and this

1108
01:01:05,800 --> 01:01:09,280
Speaker 1: is pretty clever, styrofoam floors they just made. They made

1109
01:01:09,320 --> 01:01:14,200
Speaker 1: styrofoam ship hull. I don't know what styrofoam stuff that

1110
01:01:14,280 --> 01:01:16,400
Speaker 1: would be the floors of the ship, and then spray

1111
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:18,600
Speaker 1: painted its silver to make it look like it was metal.

1112
01:01:19,360 --> 01:01:22,520
Speaker 1: What's the name of the company, the corporation while wit

1113
01:01:22,640 --> 01:01:24,720
Speaker 1: in Utani and maybe they're just super cheap and they're

1114
01:01:24,800 --> 01:01:30,200
Speaker 1: like styrofoam. That's great. I'm sure that's what it was.

1115
01:01:30,320 --> 01:01:33,440
Speaker 1: But in any sense, so what was it made of? Well,

1116
01:01:33,800 --> 01:01:39,240
Speaker 1: the blood they had was made of chloroform acid, tone, cyclohexylamine,

1117
01:01:39,640 --> 01:01:43,440
Speaker 1: and acetic acid, which is vinegar. Pretty much, acetic acid

1118
01:01:43,560 --> 01:01:46,320
Speaker 1: is deluded to create vinegar and then some other compounds.

1119
01:01:46,880 --> 01:01:49,720
Speaker 1: But I thought this is funny because so acetic acid, yes,

1120
01:01:49,760 --> 01:01:52,600
Speaker 1: of course, is an acid deluding deluded in in water

1121
01:01:52,720 --> 01:01:55,800
Speaker 1: to make vinegar with some other flavorings. Acetone is not

1122
01:01:56,000 --> 01:01:59,920
Speaker 1: an acid, that's neutral neutral pH of seven uh cycle

1123
01:02:00,080 --> 01:02:03,320
Speaker 1: hex Lamine is a base and then and then of course,

1124
01:02:03,360 --> 01:02:06,120
Speaker 1: the head of chloroform and stuff, and apparently it eats

1125
01:02:06,200 --> 01:02:08,760
Speaker 1: through styrofoam all right, but it probably wouldn't eat through

1126
01:02:08,760 --> 01:02:12,040
Speaker 1: a real spacecraft's hull. And one of the big reasons

1127
01:02:12,080 --> 01:02:14,920
Speaker 1: it eats through styrofoam is probably the presence of acetone.

1128
01:02:14,920 --> 01:02:16,520
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever seen videos of what

1129
01:02:16,600 --> 01:02:19,880
Speaker 1: happens when you pour acetone on a styrofoam wighead or

1130
01:02:19,960 --> 01:02:22,320
Speaker 1: something like that. I don't think I've seen those videos.

1131
01:02:22,360 --> 01:02:24,160
Speaker 1: If you ever want to make a head melt for

1132
01:02:24,240 --> 01:02:26,320
Speaker 1: a bunch of children, this is a fun party trick.

1133
01:02:26,400 --> 01:02:28,520
Speaker 1: I just don't don't get any of the Well I'll

1134
01:02:28,560 --> 01:02:32,080
Speaker 1: keep that in mind from my son's a fifth birthday. Yeah, So, like,

1135
01:02:32,200 --> 01:02:34,160
Speaker 1: here's the head of your enemy, and you just pour

1136
01:02:34,280 --> 01:02:37,120
Speaker 1: some acetone on that styrofoam head, it just, oh no,

1137
01:02:37,560 --> 01:02:40,680
Speaker 1: it melts. So it works great for a special effect,

1138
01:02:40,760 --> 01:02:42,960
Speaker 1: but probably would not work for a real organism that

1139
01:02:43,040 --> 01:02:46,000
Speaker 1: wanted to melt through metal and plastic and all all

1140
01:02:46,040 --> 01:02:48,560
Speaker 1: of the other stuff that probably makes up a ship. Yeah,

1141
01:02:49,280 --> 01:02:51,680
Speaker 1: and one is a good uh, it's a good verb

1142
01:02:51,800 --> 01:02:54,280
Speaker 1: to use here, because, of course that brings up the question, well,

1143
01:02:54,280 --> 01:02:56,840
Speaker 1: how does this occur? Is this a an evolved trade?

1144
01:02:57,040 --> 01:03:00,280
Speaker 1: Is this an engineered trait? But what is the origin

1145
01:03:00,320 --> 01:03:03,240
Speaker 1: of the xenomorph? Then? Uh? Depending on how these work.

1146
01:03:03,800 --> 01:03:06,600
Speaker 1: But I have I have a couple of proposals here

1147
01:03:07,160 --> 01:03:08,880
Speaker 1: as to what could be going on with the xenomor.

1148
01:03:09,360 --> 01:03:13,640
Speaker 1: So my my first more modest and explosive proposition is this.

1149
01:03:14,440 --> 01:03:16,680
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that this doesn't match up to everybody's

1150
01:03:16,720 --> 01:03:20,400
Speaker 1: the interpretation of the franchise or every entry of the franchise.

1151
01:03:20,520 --> 01:03:22,480
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Okay, so we see the thing

1152
01:03:22,640 --> 01:03:25,280
Speaker 1: bleeding acid when it's hard, right, you shoot it, cut

1153
01:03:25,360 --> 01:03:28,080
Speaker 1: it whatever acid shoots out. And of course we also

1154
01:03:28,120 --> 01:03:30,680
Speaker 1: see it using the acid offensively occasions such as when

1155
01:03:30,720 --> 01:03:35,000
Speaker 1: that face hugger uh melts through the glass dome on

1156
01:03:35,080 --> 01:03:37,040
Speaker 1: the helmet. Oh yeah, I didn't have to cut itself

1157
01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:40,200
Speaker 1: to do, right, It somehow just utilized treated this. So

1158
01:03:40,600 --> 01:03:43,000
Speaker 1: what if this isn't the creatures blood at all, really

1159
01:03:43,160 --> 01:03:46,560
Speaker 1: not properly, but rather an acid stored throughout the body

1160
01:03:46,680 --> 01:03:49,880
Speaker 1: to react to physical harm. Uh, that in turn harms

1161
01:03:49,880 --> 01:03:52,880
Speaker 1: the attacker. That's interesting because it wouldn't have to be

1162
01:03:52,960 --> 01:03:54,760
Speaker 1: the blood, would it. I mean, you wouldn't be This

1163
01:03:54,840 --> 01:03:58,800
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to be the substance that's circulating molecular oxygen

1164
01:03:58,880 --> 01:04:01,320
Speaker 1: to the body tissues. Right, it wouldn't be serving other

1165
01:04:01,440 --> 01:04:04,800
Speaker 1: purposes in the body. It would be there expressly to

1166
01:04:05,080 --> 01:04:09,320
Speaker 1: rupture during physical harm, to uh to harm or destroy

1167
01:04:09,440 --> 01:04:12,760
Speaker 1: the attacker. And the thing is, we see something very similar,

1168
01:04:12,800 --> 01:04:17,120
Speaker 1: really identical in terrestrial termites and ants who also serve

1169
01:04:17,160 --> 01:04:18,600
Speaker 1: a queen. You know, they also, I mean that the

1170
01:04:18,760 --> 01:04:23,440
Speaker 1: termite had a huge influence on especially aliens. So um,

1171
01:04:24,400 --> 01:04:28,320
Speaker 1: So we call this a process, this practice autopsis, and

1172
01:04:28,400 --> 01:04:30,560
Speaker 1: this is the process by which a natural world organism

1173
01:04:30,640 --> 01:04:34,200
Speaker 1: destroys itself via the internal rupturing of an oregon or

1174
01:04:34,280 --> 01:04:37,120
Speaker 1: gland that in turn ruptures the skin. So it's a

1175
01:04:37,200 --> 01:04:43,360
Speaker 1: purely muscular exercise caused by deliberate contractions around the engorged tissue. Fascinating. Yeah,

1176
01:04:43,400 --> 01:04:44,920
Speaker 1: I mean it's crazy because this is the kind of

1177
01:04:45,000 --> 01:04:48,600
Speaker 1: thing that apparently evolved from pooping on your enemy. Like

1178
01:04:49,000 --> 01:04:51,040
Speaker 1: what started off as like poop on the enemy when

1179
01:04:51,040 --> 01:04:54,480
Speaker 1: they attacked and defensive defecation, but then it becomes like

1180
01:04:54,720 --> 01:04:56,160
Speaker 1: if you can't get that poop out of the aim

1181
01:04:56,200 --> 01:04:59,520
Speaker 1: as fast enough, just like make it rupture through your body,

1182
01:05:00,000 --> 01:05:04,320
Speaker 1: and that has steadily evolved over time into more complex

1183
01:05:04,480 --> 01:05:09,720
Speaker 1: modes of self rupturing, and the body buster par excellence

1184
01:05:09,800 --> 01:05:14,560
Speaker 1: here is neo Kapa Termes tarracula, and this is um.

1185
01:05:15,000 --> 01:05:18,760
Speaker 1: This is a fabulous organism. So the species workers grow

1186
01:05:18,960 --> 01:05:23,640
Speaker 1: abdominal sacks of toxic blue crystals throughout their lives. But

1187
01:05:23,760 --> 01:05:27,360
Speaker 1: these explosive backpacks, as some studies refer to them, are

1188
01:05:27,360 --> 01:05:30,600
Speaker 1: are most pronounced and elderly workers, so so as they

1189
01:05:30,680 --> 01:05:33,280
Speaker 1: become less useful to the colony, they sort of turn

1190
01:05:33,400 --> 01:05:36,439
Speaker 1: into the suicide bombers exactly like you know, you don't

1191
01:05:36,440 --> 01:05:39,440
Speaker 1: have you have dull and useless mandibles. You really know,

1192
01:05:39,720 --> 01:05:42,360
Speaker 1: not that much use, but you've become a stockpile for

1193
01:05:42,560 --> 01:05:46,920
Speaker 1: toxic substances, and that becomes your purpose. When enemies invade

1194
01:05:47,760 --> 01:05:51,120
Speaker 1: the termite mound. Uh, the the ind they just rushed forward.

1195
01:05:51,120 --> 01:05:54,439
Speaker 1: The invaders then bite into their bodies, and that's when

1196
01:05:54,480 --> 01:05:58,720
Speaker 1: the blue crystals combine with salivary secretions to produce a

1197
01:05:58,800 --> 01:06:04,240
Speaker 1: deadly chemical weapon. Huh. So that would mean that the

1198
01:06:04,560 --> 01:06:08,080
Speaker 1: xenomorph here would simply boast a system of pressurized acid tubes,

1199
01:06:08,160 --> 01:06:10,600
Speaker 1: and it's it is merely the rupture of those tubes

1200
01:06:10,680 --> 01:06:12,800
Speaker 1: that we see uh and it and is therefore an

1201
01:06:12,840 --> 01:06:16,640
Speaker 1: act of autos So this would be like highly concentrated

1202
01:06:16,720 --> 01:06:19,800
Speaker 1: stomach acid or something else that has evolved into this

1203
01:06:19,920 --> 01:06:22,320
Speaker 1: defensive mode. Yeah, and of course we do see from

1204
01:06:22,400 --> 01:06:24,840
Speaker 1: our own stomach. So like we talked about earlier, that

1205
01:06:24,920 --> 01:06:28,160
Speaker 1: it's possible for a body to contain within it some uh,

1206
01:06:28,360 --> 01:06:31,720
Speaker 1: some concentration of acid that would be very damaging if

1207
01:06:31,760 --> 01:06:34,240
Speaker 1: we encountered it externally or in the wrong part of

1208
01:06:34,280 --> 01:06:38,680
Speaker 1: the body. You just need specialized cells along whatever you know,

1209
01:06:39,080 --> 01:06:42,640
Speaker 1: body tissues containing it to to buffer it essentially, to

1210
01:06:42,760 --> 01:06:45,120
Speaker 1: keep it, uh from reacting with the rest of the

1211
01:06:45,160 --> 01:06:49,080
Speaker 1: body exactly. Now, of course, all of this is taking

1212
01:06:49,120 --> 01:06:51,640
Speaker 1: a very terrestrial approach to it. It's taking a very

1213
01:06:52,000 --> 01:06:55,800
Speaker 1: carbon biased, water biased approach. But of course, not all

1214
01:06:56,480 --> 01:07:00,680
Speaker 1: modes of life, not all biochemistry is out there, are

1215
01:07:00,800 --> 01:07:04,600
Speaker 1: necessarily based on carbon or based on water. So we

1216
01:07:04,680 --> 01:07:06,439
Speaker 1: might have to take it a bit further. What sort

1217
01:07:06,480 --> 01:07:10,120
Speaker 1: of organism might have blood that is either incidentally or

1218
01:07:10,200 --> 01:07:15,240
Speaker 1: adaptively corrosive at least to our sort of flesh. Well,

1219
01:07:16,160 --> 01:07:19,600
Speaker 1: perhaps they're silicon based life forms as opposed to carbon based.

1220
01:07:20,120 --> 01:07:22,640
Speaker 1: So even here on Earth we have solicit acid, which

1221
01:07:22,680 --> 01:07:26,720
Speaker 1: is very weak acid, and our hair, our nails, or epidermists. Uh.

1222
01:07:27,040 --> 01:07:33,680
Speaker 1: So it seems conceivable that this, or perhaps hexafluoro silsilic acid,

1223
01:07:33,880 --> 01:07:39,320
Speaker 1: might play into a silicone based xenomorph's anatomy. And this

1224
01:07:39,440 --> 01:07:41,720
Speaker 1: is the exact sort of biochemistry that could enable a

1225
01:07:41,800 --> 01:07:45,120
Speaker 1: life form to thrive in a sulfuric acid rich environment.

1226
01:07:45,640 --> 01:07:48,240
Speaker 1: Now I'm not sure it could be as potent as

1227
01:07:48,320 --> 01:07:49,920
Speaker 1: what we see in the films, but this is an

1228
01:07:49,960 --> 01:07:52,440
Speaker 1: area where I think, you know, there any biochemists listening

1229
01:07:52,480 --> 01:07:54,400
Speaker 1: off to weigh in on that for us? Yeah? Well,

1230
01:07:54,400 --> 01:07:58,640
Speaker 1: I mean, how how reactive would an acid or whatever

1231
01:07:58,680 --> 01:08:01,200
Speaker 1: the chemical is, Maybe it's a wrong base actually that

1232
01:08:01,320 --> 01:08:03,600
Speaker 1: it's releasing. How strong would it have to be to

1233
01:08:03,720 --> 01:08:06,400
Speaker 1: really eat through the hull that fast? Is there any

1234
01:08:06,480 --> 01:08:09,120
Speaker 1: chemical that would really eat through the hull that fast?

1235
01:08:09,240 --> 01:08:11,520
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Maybe what if it has

1236
01:08:11,560 --> 01:08:15,040
Speaker 1: the fluoro antimonic acid in it? Yeah, And you know,

1237
01:08:15,120 --> 01:08:17,200
Speaker 1: the thing is for a defense. You know, if you're

1238
01:08:17,200 --> 01:08:20,200
Speaker 1: if you're thinking about something that has evolved, this as

1239
01:08:20,240 --> 01:08:23,120
Speaker 1: a basic defense against human ooid creatures that are very

1240
01:08:23,479 --> 01:08:26,000
Speaker 1: or at least semi human like. All you would need

1241
01:08:26,000 --> 01:08:28,439
Speaker 1: you wouldn't need a very strong acid or base at

1242
01:08:28,439 --> 01:08:30,519
Speaker 1: all to just like get in their eyes and give

1243
01:08:30,560 --> 01:08:33,040
Speaker 1: you a moment's advantage in some sort of an altercation.

1244
01:08:33,800 --> 01:08:37,560
Speaker 1: But it seems as if it's an organism perfectly conceived

1245
01:08:37,880 --> 01:08:42,719
Speaker 1: to be unkillable on a spaceship for plot purposes. Indeed,

1246
01:08:42,880 --> 01:08:46,040
Speaker 1: it is a perfect organism. Now, some experts, including the

1247
01:08:46,520 --> 01:08:50,840
Speaker 1: late Great Carl Sake and have speculated that alternate astrobiologies

1248
01:08:50,920 --> 01:08:54,719
Speaker 1: could still entail carbon but depend on something other than water.

1249
01:08:54,960 --> 01:09:00,439
Speaker 1: Is the solvent such as ammonia or perhaps hydrofluoric acid. Yeah,

1250
01:09:00,600 --> 01:09:02,599
Speaker 1: and of course this is crazy because we we mentioned

1251
01:09:02,640 --> 01:09:06,880
Speaker 1: the face hugger burning through the presumably glass helmet, and

1252
01:09:07,240 --> 01:09:09,280
Speaker 1: uh and what does hydrofluoric acid do? But it can

1253
01:09:09,320 --> 01:09:11,960
Speaker 1: break down glass, as we mentioned. Yeah, of course, now

1254
01:09:12,040 --> 01:09:14,599
Speaker 1: it does take a while. Again, one of the things

1255
01:09:14,680 --> 01:09:18,320
Speaker 1: that's always not quite matching upright between the movie acid

1256
01:09:18,400 --> 01:09:20,840
Speaker 1: and the acid in the in the real experiments we're

1257
01:09:20,840 --> 01:09:23,439
Speaker 1: talking about is just rapidity. It's just the time it

1258
01:09:23,560 --> 01:09:26,400
Speaker 1: takes to dissolve things. Right. Everything is instant in the films,

1259
01:09:26,400 --> 01:09:28,120
Speaker 1: and it just it doesn't seem to be that way

1260
01:09:28,200 --> 01:09:30,479
Speaker 1: with real chemistry. So here's a quote from Sagan in

1261
01:09:30,600 --> 01:09:35,320
Speaker 1: Nine Cosmos his book. Perhaps elsewhere some solvent other than

1262
01:09:35,360 --> 01:09:38,680
Speaker 1: the water is used, hydrofluoric acid might serve rather well,

1263
01:09:39,200 --> 01:09:41,200
Speaker 1: although there is not a great deal of fluorine in

1264
01:09:41,240 --> 01:09:44,720
Speaker 1: the cosmos. Hydrofluoric acid would do a great deal of

1265
01:09:44,840 --> 01:09:47,439
Speaker 1: damage to the kind of molecules that make us up,

1266
01:09:47,920 --> 01:09:52,599
Speaker 1: but other organic molecules paraffin waxes, for example, are perfectly

1267
01:09:52,680 --> 01:09:55,840
Speaker 1: stable in its presence. I like hear Carl Sagan voice.

1268
01:09:55,920 --> 01:09:59,160
Speaker 1: It's it's it's not that great of a voice. We

1269
01:09:59,200 --> 01:10:01,439
Speaker 1: really what we need as we need Chuck to come

1270
01:10:01,479 --> 01:10:04,120
Speaker 1: in and do his kermit the frog voice, which I

1271
01:10:04,240 --> 01:10:07,000
Speaker 1: think also sounds very sagany. I don't think I've ever

1272
01:10:07,080 --> 01:10:08,760
Speaker 1: heard that. Oh you should, you should ask him to

1273
01:10:08,800 --> 01:10:11,320
Speaker 1: do a little kermit. But read some Cosmos. I think

1274
01:10:11,360 --> 01:10:14,120
Speaker 1: your Carl Sagan is pretty good man. Don't don't put

1275
01:10:14,160 --> 01:10:16,920
Speaker 1: yourself down, all right? Well, you know, well Sagan is

1276
01:10:16,960 --> 01:10:18,880
Speaker 1: not the only one to chime in on this. Uh.

1277
01:10:19,120 --> 01:10:22,320
Speaker 1: Plenty of other biochemists have also looked at, you know,

1278
01:10:22,600 --> 01:10:28,120
Speaker 1: possible alternate biochemistries, and they've presented sulfuric acid as a possibility.

1279
01:10:28,520 --> 01:10:32,000
Speaker 1: So it's certainly more cosmically common. You know, so it

1280
01:10:32,200 --> 01:10:34,880
Speaker 1: would it would make sense. In the two thousand seven

1281
01:10:34,960 --> 01:10:38,880
Speaker 1: book The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems, and

1282
01:10:38,960 --> 01:10:42,559
Speaker 1: this is a book by a number of authors, it's

1283
01:10:42,720 --> 01:10:45,759
Speaker 1: it's It's credited authors are the Committee on the Limits

1284
01:10:45,800 --> 01:10:50,439
Speaker 1: of Organic Life and Planetary Systems UM, the National Research Council,

1285
01:10:50,479 --> 01:10:51,960
Speaker 1: and a few other bodies. I'm not going to list

1286
01:10:52,040 --> 01:10:56,920
Speaker 1: them all, but in a chapter titled Hawai Water Toward

1287
01:10:57,080 --> 01:11:01,400
Speaker 1: more Exotic Habitats, they state the fall quote, sulfuric acid

1288
01:11:01,479 --> 01:11:05,679
Speaker 1: is a reasonably good solvent that supports chemical reactivity. Sulfuric

1289
01:11:05,720 --> 01:11:09,639
Speaker 1: acid is known to exist above Venus, where three cloud

1290
01:11:09,720 --> 01:11:14,160
Speaker 1: layers at KOs are composed mostly of aerosols of sulfuric

1291
01:11:14,200 --> 01:11:17,880
Speaker 1: acid about in the upper layer and then in the

1292
01:11:17,960 --> 01:11:23,440
Speaker 1: lower layer. The temperature about kelvin at about fifty KOs

1293
01:11:23,479 --> 01:11:27,000
Speaker 1: altitude at about one point five a t m is

1294
01:11:27,040 --> 01:11:31,439
Speaker 1: consistent with stable carbon to carbon covalent bonds. So the

1295
01:11:31,520 --> 01:11:34,960
Speaker 1: tacomb here is that, yes, it is conceivable that we

1296
01:11:35,040 --> 01:11:39,120
Speaker 1: would have a a a carbon based life form in

1297
01:11:39,240 --> 01:11:44,080
Speaker 1: which the solvent is sulfuric acid. It's reasonable now whether

1298
01:11:44,200 --> 01:11:48,920
Speaker 1: that life could actually match up to the just profound

1299
01:11:49,120 --> 01:11:54,200
Speaker 1: the standards that we set with the xenomorph. That's another issue. Yeah,

1300
01:11:54,720 --> 01:11:56,479
Speaker 1: are you are you breaking my heart? Robert? Are you

1301
01:11:56,600 --> 01:11:59,040
Speaker 1: telling me that there's probably not a xenomorph anywhere in

1302
01:11:59,080 --> 01:12:04,200
Speaker 1: our solar system. I'm saying that the xenomorph exists in

1303
01:12:04,280 --> 01:12:08,200
Speaker 1: the realm of forms. Yeah, and and but the universe

1304
01:12:08,400 --> 01:12:10,679
Speaker 1: that we live in, it's it may be at least

1305
01:12:10,720 --> 01:12:13,320
Speaker 1: willing to meet us halfway. Well, even a pale imitation

1306
01:12:13,400 --> 01:12:16,360
Speaker 1: of xenomorph would be welcome to my ears. Yes, so

1307
01:12:16,520 --> 01:12:19,280
Speaker 1: in my eyes as it burned them out. So if

1308
01:12:19,320 --> 01:12:21,240
Speaker 1: you yeah, if you lived to be um, you know,

1309
01:12:21,439 --> 01:12:25,200
Speaker 1: several thousand years old, your your life prolonged by all

1310
01:12:25,280 --> 01:12:28,759
Speaker 1: the various technologies available to you, and you set yourself

1311
01:12:28,880 --> 01:12:32,000
Speaker 1: on the perfect death. You want to die via the

1312
01:12:32,280 --> 01:12:36,720
Speaker 1: acidic blood of of of an alien species. There is

1313
01:12:36,880 --> 01:12:40,040
Speaker 1: maybe some hope. So, Robert, I've enjoyed exploring this with

1314
01:12:40,160 --> 01:12:43,679
Speaker 1: you because I've always loved movie Acid, and I wonder

1315
01:12:43,800 --> 01:12:46,280
Speaker 1: what it is that captivates us so much about Acid.

1316
01:12:46,320 --> 01:12:48,080
Speaker 1: I want to go back to that question I started with,

1317
01:12:48,280 --> 01:12:50,200
Speaker 1: why you know they so they put Batman in the

1318
01:12:50,240 --> 01:12:53,840
Speaker 1: bank vault. Oh no, it's boiling acid. It could have

1319
01:12:53,960 --> 01:12:57,200
Speaker 1: been boiling water or even room temperature water and it

1320
01:12:57,320 --> 01:13:00,120
Speaker 1: still would have killed him. But that wouldn't be nearly

1321
01:13:00,240 --> 01:13:03,560
Speaker 1: is interesting For some reason, we want acid. Why is

1322
01:13:03,640 --> 01:13:06,040
Speaker 1: acid so interesting? Is a way to kill people when

1323
01:13:06,080 --> 01:13:07,960
Speaker 1: you could get the same thing done with just a

1324
01:13:08,160 --> 01:13:11,559
Speaker 1: hot uh normal liquid. You know, it could be hot

1325
01:13:12,439 --> 01:13:14,840
Speaker 1: uh bleach. I mean, well, you know that would be

1326
01:13:15,000 --> 01:13:17,040
Speaker 1: that would be a pretty weird interesting way to kill people.

1327
01:13:17,080 --> 01:13:20,599
Speaker 1: But hot water, boiling water that people would be like, huh,

1328
01:13:21,000 --> 01:13:23,320
Speaker 1: why why didn't you go to acid? Well, because well,

1329
01:13:23,400 --> 01:13:25,599
Speaker 1: for one thing, boiling water is every day, right, yeah,

1330
01:13:25,800 --> 01:13:27,960
Speaker 1: or if not every day, it's like even like most

1331
01:13:28,000 --> 01:13:30,360
Speaker 1: people have some experience of putting the macaroni in the

1332
01:13:30,400 --> 01:13:32,720
Speaker 1: boiling water. Yeah, yeah, And I think that's right. I

1333
01:13:32,800 --> 01:13:37,439
Speaker 1: think heating. Heating is a method of changing the chemical

1334
01:13:37,560 --> 01:13:40,000
Speaker 1: nature of something that's very familiar to us. Whereas the

1335
01:13:40,080 --> 01:13:43,240
Speaker 1: chemical reactions that take place in the bond breaking that

1336
01:13:43,360 --> 01:13:46,040
Speaker 1: takes place when you've got an acid solution of water,

1337
01:13:46,800 --> 01:13:49,160
Speaker 1: that that's something that's less familiar to us. We don't

1338
01:13:49,200 --> 01:13:52,360
Speaker 1: understand what's going on there. And for that reason, it's

1339
01:13:52,439 --> 01:13:55,759
Speaker 1: kind of like magic. Yeah, it's to the the average viewer,

1340
01:13:56,040 --> 01:13:59,800
Speaker 1: like a bad guy dissolving an acid makes as much

1341
01:14:00,000 --> 01:14:03,760
Speaker 1: scientific sense as one ron silver touching on another ron

1342
01:14:03,880 --> 01:14:06,920
Speaker 1: silver in time cop and then becoming a big red

1343
01:14:07,040 --> 01:14:11,599
Speaker 1: goog of melt. But yeah, that's why they're both wonderful.

1344
01:14:11,680 --> 01:14:14,880
Speaker 1: That they capture the magic of nonsense exactly. They put

1345
01:14:14,960 --> 01:14:18,559
Speaker 1: it right into your face or on the face. Hey,

1346
01:14:18,680 --> 01:14:22,240
Speaker 1: so there you have it, Hollywood acid. Uh so again,

1347
01:14:22,240 --> 01:14:23,880
Speaker 1: you want to check out more episodes of the podcast,

1348
01:14:23,920 --> 01:14:25,599
Speaker 1: You want to check out the links we're talking about

1349
01:14:25,640 --> 01:14:27,880
Speaker 1: some related material heading over stuff to Blow your Mind

1350
01:14:27,920 --> 01:14:30,519
Speaker 1: dot com. That's we'll find our podcast, including this one.

1351
01:14:30,600 --> 01:14:32,559
Speaker 1: The landing page WI watch some cool links to related

1352
01:14:32,600 --> 01:14:35,200
Speaker 1: kindent on the site and off the site. The website

1353
01:14:35,240 --> 01:14:37,200
Speaker 1: will also have videos, blog post links out to our

1354
01:14:37,240 --> 01:14:39,800
Speaker 1: social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. We are

1355
01:14:39,840 --> 01:14:41,600
Speaker 1: blow the mind on both of those were stuff to

1356
01:14:41,600 --> 01:14:44,519
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind on Tumbler and Instagram, I believe, so

1357
01:14:44,960 --> 01:14:46,720
Speaker 1: check those out as well. And if you want to

1358
01:14:46,760 --> 01:14:48,839
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

1359
01:14:48,960 --> 01:14:50,360
Speaker 1: or any other, or you want to let us know

1360
01:14:50,439 --> 01:14:53,120
Speaker 1: what your questions or ideas are, you can always email

1361
01:14:53,160 --> 01:14:55,320
Speaker 1: as that blow the mind of how Stuff course stock

1362
01:15:04,200 --> 01:15:06,600
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

1363
01:15:06,640 --> 01:15:18,800
Speaker 1: that how Stuff works dot com. They they believe the

1364
01:15:18,960 --> 01:15:19,640
Speaker 1: biggest