Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey
Speaker 1: real quick at the top of the show here. If
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Speaker 1: wherever you get the show. Yeah, so, Robert, I've got
Speaker 1: a question for you. All right, hit me, Joe. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take you to a dark place. This might be
Speaker 1: a little traumatic, Okay, okay. Do you remember nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: the Batman movies of the nineteen nineties, Think back to
Speaker 1: Batman Forever. Oh that was That was a Dark Time,
Speaker 1: directed by Joel Schumacher, starring Val Kilmer as Batman and
Speaker 1: Tommy Lee Jones in it as the as two face,
Speaker 1: a very manic to face if I recall, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was he was kind of all over the place. That
Speaker 1: one was snarling a lot, kind of whipping his body
Speaker 1: around in a frenzy, and that, of course was the
Speaker 1: acid scarred and that telling of the Uh I believe
Speaker 1: he was. Yeah, they So the story of two Face
Speaker 1: in that version is that he's a Harvey Dent is
Speaker 1: the lawyer who becomes two Face believe he's a district's
Speaker 1: attorney and he gets scarred on one part of his
Speaker 1: face and it drives him insane, and uh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think they go deep into the backstory and Batman forever,
Speaker 1: but anyway, it's Tommy Lee Jones and he's he's going
Speaker 1: wild and he's really trying to get Batman in this one.
Speaker 1: So there's a scene where Batman goes into a bank
Speaker 1: vault where there is a I believe a vault guard
Speaker 1: of some kind tied up, and when Batman goes in
Speaker 1: to rescue this guard, the door slams shut and acid
Speaker 1: starts pouring out of all of the I believe out
Speaker 1: of the safe deposit boxes. Okay, so a lot of
Speaker 1: people may we were keeping their precious acid in this vault. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the the vault guard realizes what's happening as as
Speaker 1: Two Face taunts them that they're going to die in
Speaker 1: this bank vault, and the guard says, oh no, it's
Speaker 1: boiling acid. There's like a seven second YouTube clip of
Speaker 1: this that I watch at least once a week. It's
Speaker 1: one of my favorites. I I watched this for the
Speaker 1: first time, I think because I don't know that I've
Speaker 1: actually seen this. Uh, this Batman film. I was super
Speaker 1: into the first two. Yeah, when I was a kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Burton Batman's were great, and I wanted to get
Speaker 1: into the Schumacher ones, and you know, it didn't work.
Speaker 1: And I think part of the reason it's not worth
Speaker 1: it is that boiling acid. Uh. It tightly sums up
Speaker 1: everything about those funds well exactly. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that I find so funny about it is, well,
Speaker 1: if two faces trying to kill them, why couldn't it
Speaker 1: be Oh no, it's boiling water. I mean, if it's
Speaker 1: boiling what what difference does it make? Or if it's acid,
Speaker 1: or hey, if it's just water, if you're flooding, if
Speaker 1: you're flating a sealed right, I mean, it can be
Speaker 1: that it's room temperature water. We're gonna drown. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so this obviously brings in a favorite old trope of
Speaker 1: the superhero genre. But really it's all throughout the movies,
Speaker 1: and this is movie acid. Notice that the guard in
Speaker 1: the vault doesn't say what the chemical compound is. It's
Speaker 1: not like he recognizes. Oh no, it's hydrofluoric acid. No,
Speaker 1: it's just acid. And this kind of acid plays a
Speaker 1: role in all of our favorite you know, our favorite cartoons,
Speaker 1: science fiction and superhero stuff. It's it's movie acid. It's
Speaker 1: Hollywood acid. So you're probably familiar with this. You remember
Speaker 1: lots of other scenes from Batman. I bet right, it's
Speaker 1: always in Batman, like the villain captures Batman, is the penguin,
Speaker 1: or somebody's got Batman tied up on a rope dangling
Speaker 1: over a vat of acid. Yeah, I mean, it's such
Speaker 1: a like a vat of acid is one of those things.
Speaker 1: It's it's a it's a perfect u like human technological achievement,
Speaker 1: and then we can then utilize for menacing purposes. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like having a whole bunch of molten
Speaker 1: steel on hand or a hydraulic press. Right. It represents
Speaker 1: all of the evils of human industry and sort of
Speaker 1: the cold killer nature of technology. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's it's a great just sort of like a vertical peril.
Speaker 1: It's a like a thing to have below you. It's
Speaker 1: like a pit of piranhas or a pit of crocodiles
Speaker 1: or something, and a pit of molecules that want to, uh,
Speaker 1: want to play nice with all of your skin. So
Speaker 1: what are the properties of Hollywood acid or movie acid
Speaker 1: we might call it. I want to list a few
Speaker 1: and maybe you'll have some of your own. Okay, go
Speaker 1: for it. One of them is that it causes severe
Speaker 1: and immediate burns to the skin and soft tissues. That
Speaker 1: sounds about right, yeah, just immediate scarification, meltification, um. And
Speaker 1: we can run through some examples of that in a minute, right. So.
Speaker 1: Another one is if you put organicterials such as a batman,
Speaker 1: into a vat of acid, it will kill and then
Speaker 1: rapidly dissolve that organism. So it has not only killing
Speaker 1: and burning powers, but also liquification powers. Okay, yes, you're
Speaker 1: with me so far. Another one is that the colors
Speaker 1: can vary, but it's never clear like water. You notice
Speaker 1: that the acid in the movies it always is usually opaque,
Speaker 1: usually a shade of green, purple or orange I find. Yeah, green,
Speaker 1: I think is the big one. And and I'll mention
Speaker 1: a few examples that I have instilled that that idea
Speaker 1: to me. But like if I was to draw a picture, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, doodle something with acid on the side of
Speaker 1: a piece of paper, it would be green. Yeah. A
Speaker 1: good example of the green acid is in that classic
Speaker 1: episode of The Simpsons where Millhouse becomes fallout Boy and
Speaker 1: there's there's radioactive man. They're filming a scene from the
Speaker 1: movie that's real ascid. I want to see goggles people, Yeah, exactly, goggles.
Speaker 1: They do nothing. It's great. But so another thing about
Speaker 1: the acid is that it displays am being bubbling, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to heat it up. It just naturally
Speaker 1: boils like a like a pot on the boil. Well
Speaker 1: that's so you can look at it and know that
Speaker 1: it's acid, like it's it's bubbling, it's green. It could
Speaker 1: not be more acid. Yeah. And of course the final
Speaker 1: the final effector is often kept in a giant vat,
Speaker 1: though sometimes also kept in something that squirts it out.
Speaker 1: Do you want to keep it in an open vat,
Speaker 1: open open top with with some you know, room to
Speaker 1: have some sort of a chain system in place and
Speaker 1: some pulleys or whatever, however you want to position your
Speaker 1: nemesis above it. Right now, Robert, tell me your movie
Speaker 1: Acid story. What what? What are your memories from childhood
Speaker 1: of beloved movie Acid. Oh? I have I have several, uh,
Speaker 1: but probably the most scarring was at a young age,
Speaker 1: like too young of an age, I saw a RoboCop.
Speaker 1: Who lets you watch RoboCop at a young age? I
Speaker 1: think it was like, um, like an uncle's house. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it was on. But then again, RoboCop is so
Speaker 1: violent it's hard to determine exactly what age during a
Speaker 1: childhood is appropriate to watch RoboCop. A RoboCop an R
Speaker 1: rated ultra violent picture for which there were toys, and
Speaker 1: I think still our toys produced. Another thing I mean
Speaker 1: to say about RoboCop is that the level of violence
Speaker 1: and it isn't incidental. It's deliberately hyper violent, I would say,
Speaker 1: in a satirical uh, for satirical reasons. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's a great film. Um, but who I think back
Speaker 1: about to my seeing it as as a young person,
Speaker 1: and I'm a little appalled at times. But yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a scene where and I'm sure anyone who has seen
Speaker 1: this has this et burned into their mind as well.
Speaker 1: One of the villain's Hinchman's gets gets just coated in acid.
Speaker 1: Leave his name is Emal Is that is that his name?
Speaker 1: So Emal gets coated in acid. I don't even remember
Speaker 1: how it happened, Like the RoboCop shoot a vata acid
Speaker 1: that was behind him and they're setting well, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of sort of ambient
Speaker 1: industry in the movie. It takes place in a dystopian
Speaker 1: future Detroit, and they're like old factories with what we
Speaker 1: would presume are just vats of toxic waste and asked
Speaker 1: it hanging around, Yeah, and somehow this guy gets it
Speaker 1: splashed all over him during a car chase scene. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then he comes just zombie like walking out shambling,
Speaker 1: totally meltified, and and then a car runs over. Like
Speaker 1: there's a second there where you just horrified, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this poor guy, look at the Stadi's in and then
Speaker 1: like robocopper, one of the villa I think it's the
Speaker 1: main villain gets him with the car and he just
Speaker 1: like splatters like a like a water balloon full of blood,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's the dad from that seventies show who
Speaker 1: gets in with the car And I never trusted that
Speaker 1: seventies show because of RoboCop. I knew what he was
Speaker 1: capable of. Clarence Botocker, he's a great villain. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he hits him with the car and he just turns
Speaker 1: to liquid. He's like a bag of soup and uh
Speaker 1: and I remember the villain he turns on the windshield wiper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gross, but it's also there's tons of acid in
Speaker 1: video games, right. Video games love this, I guess because
Speaker 1: acids probably fun to animate. Yeah, and if and a
Speaker 1: lot of games. If you're doing a platform game, right,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a wonderful thing to have to fall
Speaker 1: into and of bounce out off. But my favorite example
Speaker 1: is from Mortal Kombat two, which was like a major
Speaker 1: major game for me when I was younger, and in
Speaker 1: that you have two wonderful uses of acid. You have
Speaker 1: a stage uh called I think the deadpool where you're
Speaker 1: fighting on a platform and there's just just green acid,
Speaker 1: uh through fills the room or ambiently bubbling, I can't
Speaker 1: remember it's bubbling or not. But if you upper cut
Speaker 1: your opponent into the acid at the the end of
Speaker 1: the match for the fatality. Then they just splash, they scream,
Speaker 1: they disappear under the acid, and then when they float
Speaker 1: up to the top, they're just a completely clean skeleton.
Speaker 1: Oh how long does that take? One second? Two seconds? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then of course that game also introduced the character Reptile,
Speaker 1: who is a reptile, a lizard man ninja um, which
Speaker 1: I just you know, you just think that for granted now,
Speaker 1: but he also spits acid. So he takes his little
Speaker 1: mask off and goes and this, uh, this green glob
Speaker 1: comes flying across the screen and burns you. One of
Speaker 1: the most horrible acid scenes I remember from a kid
Speaker 1: was from the movie The Fly. We shouldn't dwell on
Speaker 1: this kind of great movie, but yeah, the fly has
Speaker 1: digestive enzymes. I suppose that he sort of like spits
Speaker 1: out on people too, uh, to homogenize their flesh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's an early scene where Brundle fly be
Speaker 1: of course, you know, if you haven't seen it, first
Speaker 1: of all, go see it. But mad scientist and a
Speaker 1: fly their DNA is spliced the teleportation accident, and there's
Speaker 1: a scene where he's recording himself feeding on something like
Speaker 1: so just a bunch of sugary junk food, right, and
Speaker 1: you don't actually see it, happy to just hear it
Speaker 1: and it's horrific. And then of course later he weaponized
Speaker 1: is this biological effect? And speaking of weaponized acid biology,
Speaker 1: we would have to mention I guess this will be
Speaker 1: a final example of the xenomorph from the films. Uh So,
Speaker 1: in Ridley Scott's Alien you might remember this the old
Speaker 1: classic Alien, we first see the xenomorphous acid blood during
Speaker 1: the scene where if you remember, John Hurt's character gets
Speaker 1: a gets an alien parasite attached to his face called
Speaker 1: a face hugger, like burns through his helmet. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes through his face mask and then it's attached
Speaker 1: to his face and and they're trying to decide if
Speaker 1: they should cut it off of him on the spaceship
Speaker 1: and Ian Holme eventually decides to cut one of its
Speaker 1: fingers off to see if they can remove it, and
Speaker 1: it squirts blood, and this blood hits the floor and
Speaker 1: it sizzles when it splashes on the floor, and then
Speaker 1: continues to eat right through the material of the spacecraft's
Speaker 1: floor and then drops down through like two more floors
Speaker 1: I think through the levels until it eventually stops reacting
Speaker 1: a few levels down, finally neutralizes and goes through the
Speaker 1: entire hole. And then Tom Skret's character Captain Dallas. He
Speaker 1: says he's never seen anything like that before, except quote
Speaker 1: molecular acid, which is funny that that term doesn't really
Speaker 1: make any sense since all acids are composed of molecules. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in the sequels they correct this by saying the
Speaker 1: aliens have concentrated acid for blood, which does make more
Speaker 1: sense in the sense that they're suggesting. It's not like
Speaker 1: vinegar or some of their friendly acid that's highly deluded
Speaker 1: to a safe concentration. It's a highly concentrated, strong acid.
Speaker 1: But later in this episode, we should explore exactly what
Speaker 1: might be going on in terms of the aliens blood,
Speaker 1: how it could be that acidic, if there were something
Speaker 1: truly like that in nature. Yes, we will circle back
Speaker 1: around to the xenomorphes at the end. But anyway, so,
Speaker 1: why why this obsession with acid? We we love this stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, it keeps showing up in our media all
Speaker 1: the time, even though we were not really we can't
Speaker 1: be bothered to learn all the chemistry of exactly what
Speaker 1: chemicals are are out there that could do real harm
Speaker 1: to our body. So it's always just acid. You know,
Speaker 1: there's some acid. It's just basically like a magical corrosive substance. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So we we wanted to talk today about the real
Speaker 1: science of strong acids. And I don't know to what
Speaker 1: extent you can find chemicals in the real world that
Speaker 1: match up to these the movie Acid and how close
Speaker 1: you can get, Yes, okay, So to give you the
Speaker 1: basics before we get into the strongest assets out there
Speaker 1: the movie Acid, we we should do a real simple
Speaker 1: overview of acids, bases and pH I'm not going to
Speaker 1: turn this into a chemistry class, but we do need
Speaker 1: to sort of explain how they work. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: picture your periodic table and then go directly to square one. Hydrogen.
Speaker 1: It's the most basic atom in the universe. It's got
Speaker 1: one proton and one electron, and most of the hydrogen
Speaker 1: in the universe has no neutrons. But if you want
Speaker 1: to add one or two, you can get deuterium or tritium,
Speaker 1: but we're not really concerned with that right now. So
Speaker 1: your hydrogen atom one proton, one electron and it's electrically
Speaker 1: neutral because it's balanced like that. The electron has a
Speaker 1: negative charge, the proton has a positive charge. If hydrogen
Speaker 1: loses its electron, it becomes a hydrogen ion, which is
Speaker 1: just a proton. It's one single, lonely proton with an
Speaker 1: unbalanced positive charge, and of course nature hates that unbalanced
Speaker 1: positive charge. It wants to get back together, so that
Speaker 1: lonely proton is going to be looking for a way
Speaker 1: to join up with something that has a negative charge
Speaker 1: and again become electrically neutral. So water is made of
Speaker 1: the electrically neutral molecule H two oh. That's one oxygen
Speaker 1: atom bonded with two hydrogen atoms. And if one of
Speaker 1: the two hydrogen atoms in the water molecule breaks free,
Speaker 1: it just runs off, says I'm gonna do my own thing,
Speaker 1: free of a water molecule and leaves its electron. With
Speaker 1: that water molecule, you're left with a hydrogen ion, which
Speaker 1: is just that positively charged free proton proton, and then
Speaker 1: a hydroxide molecule which is O H minus. It's a
Speaker 1: molecule with a negative charge with one oxygen atom one
Speaker 1: hydrogen atom. Now this can happen naturally in water. Sometimes
Speaker 1: this is called the the ionization of water. Do ionization
Speaker 1: of water. You can just have water sitting there in
Speaker 1: a glass and some subset of the molecules within it
Speaker 1: are going to undergo this reaction where a hydrogen proton
Speaker 1: leaves one of the molecules joins to another one, and
Speaker 1: that creates this hydroxide molecule oh negative negatively charged. And
Speaker 1: then also and i uh a molecule called hydronium, which
Speaker 1: is H three OH. It's a positively charged water molecule
Speaker 1: that has three hydrogens on it. And so here's where
Speaker 1: we get into acids and basins bases. There are several
Speaker 1: different chemical definitions, but we're gonna go with the Bronze
Speaker 1: Stead Lowry definition because you know which other definition would
Speaker 1: you go with? This is obviously the best. It's named
Speaker 1: after the Danish chemist Johannus Nicolaus Braunze said and the
Speaker 1: English chemist Thomas Martin Lowry. And so the way it
Speaker 1: goes is this, an acid is a hydrogen ion donor,
Speaker 1: in other words, a proton donor. It's a chemical that
Speaker 1: when you put it it into water, it wants to
Speaker 1: send free hydrogen ions. These protons out into the solution,
Speaker 1: and in turn that increases the concentration of hydronium or
Speaker 1: H three. Oh, that positively charged molecule is talking about
Speaker 1: the opposite of this is a base. A base is
Speaker 1: a hydrogen ion recipient or a proton recipient. When you
Speaker 1: put it into water, it wants to increase the hydroxide concentration.
Speaker 1: It makes more molecules of O H minus the negatively
Speaker 1: charged variant of water. So what would be an example
Speaker 1: of this, Okay, So one would be, for example, hydrochloric acid.
Speaker 1: So you put hydrochloric acid in water, and it wants
Speaker 1: to break apart and donate that positively charged hydrogen ion
Speaker 1: to the water, creating some negatively charged chloride and positively
Speaker 1: charged hydronium. And here hc L is the acid and
Speaker 1: water is the base by the bronzet Dead Lowry definition.
Speaker 1: But all this stuff about acids and base this is
Speaker 1: generally going to be concerning aqueous solutions, in other words,
Speaker 1: putting stuff in water. Uh. And so this has a
Speaker 1: really awesome name, by the way, and it's known as protonation.
Speaker 1: So when you add a strong acid to a water,
Speaker 1: because you're giving away those positively charged UH hydrogen ions,
Speaker 1: you're proton aating the water. Uh. And on of course,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you can use a base to
Speaker 1: d protonate a solution. One more piece of terminology. You've
Speaker 1: probably heard of the strength of acids and bases expressed
Speaker 1: in terms of pH. They say, you know an acid
Speaker 1: as a pH of three or pH of six. What
Speaker 1: does that mean? pH is just the concentration of those
Speaker 1: hydrogen ions in a solution. So normal water, that's a neutral,
Speaker 1: and the neutral pH is usually said to be seven,
Speaker 1: So that would be one times ten to the negative
Speaker 1: seven moles per leader of hydrogen ions. And we're not
Speaker 1: going to stay on this math for a long time,
Speaker 1: but just to be clear, a mole is just the
Speaker 1: measure of how many molecules you got in something, and
Speaker 1: moles per leader would be the concentration of how many
Speaker 1: molecules you've got per leader of water. Specifically, a mole
Speaker 1: is six point o two and then some more numbers,
Speaker 1: but basically six point o two times ten to the
Speaker 1: twenty three. There's a lot of molecules out there. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so this is this is expressed by saying it
Speaker 1: has a pH of seven. So if you have a
Speaker 1: compound with a lower pH that's gonna get more acidic.
Speaker 1: They donate protons harder. They say, take these protons, take them.
Speaker 1: To put that in um in perspective, what lemon juice
Speaker 1: is a too I believe, yeah, that's about right. In fact,
Speaker 1: we can read a few a few examples of of
Speaker 1: phs INN. And then also on the other end of
Speaker 1: the scale, UH, compounds with higher pH values are stronger basis,
Speaker 1: they're more alkaline, they steal protons harder their recipients of
Speaker 1: protons uh. And so just to give a few examples
Speaker 1: on the pH scale, I just found an illustration online
Speaker 1: that gives some basic general ideas. Like we said, distilled
Speaker 1: water is going to be a seven. It's neutral. That
Speaker 1: seawater is going to be a little more of a base,
Speaker 1: it's more like an eight. And then you get baking
Speaker 1: soda solution it's a little more. It's like eight points. Something.
Speaker 1: Bleach is going to be like thirteen. That's a strong base.
Speaker 1: But then going lower on the scale, acids are gonna
Speaker 1: be things like vinegar is going to be around a
Speaker 1: three or four. Orange juice is going to be around
Speaker 1: a three or a four. Uh. It's interesting that vinegar
Speaker 1: is between orange juice and carbonated beverages, with carbonated beverages
Speaker 1: being higher acidic level than vinegar. Oh yeah, they usually
Speaker 1: say Coca cola is pretty dern acid, and then I
Speaker 1: think that was their original slogan, Taste the acid. And
Speaker 1: then once you get really low, closer to zero on
Speaker 1: the scale, you've got something like battery acid. Just really intense,
Speaker 1: strong acid. Take all the protons, take them all, right,
Speaker 1: And that's that is often where we see the at
Speaker 1: least the idea of Hollywood acids in that area, the
Speaker 1: idea like this is battery acid, this is industrial acid.
Speaker 1: This is highly corrosive stuff that will pick your skeleton dry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I should point out that we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about how strongly acids can dissolve things like organic materials today,
Speaker 1: and so because the acid that reacts with you does
Speaker 1: so through a chemical reaction, the chemicals involved matter. So
Speaker 1: some acids might actually have a lower pH than others
Speaker 1: but still be less harmful. For example, hydrofluoric acid, when
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about today, is one of the most
Speaker 1: deadly acids out there, but it doesn't necessarily have the
Speaker 1: lowest pH. And then when we're talking about the deadly
Speaker 1: aspects of acids. Another thing we'll touch on two is
Speaker 1: that sometimes it's not only the corrosive aspects of the acid,
Speaker 1: but what happens when it when it has when it
Speaker 1: undergoes the chemical reaction, what kind of gases can be
Speaker 1: admitted there some of these examples you end up with
Speaker 1: with toxic gases that are released when the acid comes
Speaker 1: into contact with the with the right substance exactly. And
Speaker 1: another thing tying into hydrofluoric acid, which we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about a little more in a minute. Uh, the
Speaker 1: danger associated with it isn't just from say topical burns.
Speaker 1: It doesn't just burn you from the outside in and
Speaker 1: and kill you that way. By getting into your skin
Speaker 1: and then getting into your blood, it can cause systemic
Speaker 1: problems that can kill you, for example by causing a
Speaker 1: heart attack and prolonged exposure to some of these that
Speaker 1: have also been linked to cancer. So there are a
Speaker 1: number of ways that these that these dangerous substances can
Speaker 1: can harm you. Yeah, okay, so let's say, based on
Speaker 1: everything we've just looked at, you're going to try to
Speaker 1: dissolve some organic materials such as a batman So you
Speaker 1: have a very strong acid, so you've got a vat
Speaker 1: of it, and you put that acid into an aqueous solution,
Speaker 1: meaning water. So you've got your acid dissolved into water,
Speaker 1: and then you put your batman in. What's going to
Speaker 1: happen to your batman, Well, depending on the may cup
Speaker 1: of the solution, what's probably gonna happen is that the
Speaker 1: acidic solution will begin breaking the chemical bonds of molecules
Speaker 1: on the outer surface of the batman, so that you know,
Speaker 1: the excess of protons and charged molecules can form bonds
Speaker 1: with other molecules in that batman material and assuming it
Speaker 1: can eat through the batman's suit, is going to start
Speaker 1: hacking up the lipids and the protein molecules in the
Speaker 1: batman's skin, forming new chemical bonds and slowly turning this
Speaker 1: imbalanced acid water batman solution into a more homogeneous gloupat. Yes, however,
Speaker 1: there are probably some materials in the batman and the
Speaker 1: batman's suit that will not react with the acid, meaning
Speaker 1: you're not likely to end up with a perfectly homogeneous mixture.
Speaker 1: You might get some gloup with some lumps in it. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the villain's acid just wants to bring Batman into equilibrium.
Speaker 1: Isn't that a nice way of thinking about it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is definitely a character out of balance with the world, right,
Speaker 1: And so unless somebody perps comes along with a dump
Speaker 1: truck through full of a week base like baking soda
Speaker 1: to pour in and neutralize the solution, that's what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Though I'm not sure exactly how that would work out
Speaker 1: for the Batman if he's still in the vat while
Speaker 1: they're neutralizing it. Yeah, would it? Would there be an explosion,
Speaker 1: an eruption? I don't know that. I think the classic
Speaker 1: Batman TVs series, of course, with its rigorous approach to science,
Speaker 1: you would probably see rob and show up dump the
Speaker 1: base in. Everything would turn to a big foam and
Speaker 1: uh everything, it would It would be like a foam
Speaker 1: slippery dance five party. Yeah, yeah, everybody does the twist.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to look at a rogues
Speaker 1: gallery of dangerous acids. All right, we're back. Well, let's yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's roll through a few examples of some powerful,
Speaker 1: potent real world acids. And again, not we're gonna try
Speaker 1: not to just really chemistry class you too much on these,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna, you know, roll through the some of
Speaker 1: the basic health ratings and uh and and attributes of
Speaker 1: these substances. Well, we talked about early on the idea
Speaker 1: of these these acids that occur in biology, and one
Speaker 1: acid that definitely occurs in biology is hydrochloric acid HCl.
Speaker 1: So there's going to be a bond between hydrogen and
Speaker 1: chlorine and it gets the job done. And I want
Speaker 1: to note that, uh, these properties are coming off of
Speaker 1: the m s d s S Material Safety Data Sheet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you're interested in pretty much any substance,
Speaker 1: any chemical substance, you can generally find um an MSDS
Speaker 1: on on the internet for this and uh it's it
Speaker 1: can be a little bit interesting, a little bit technical,
Speaker 1: depending on how much that you read. Uh So the
Speaker 1: appearance of hydrochloric acid, Uh, it would not work in
Speaker 1: a Mortal Kombat game because it's it's colorless, though it
Speaker 1: is a fuming liquid, has a pungent odor of hydrogen chloride,
Speaker 1: which means you're you're doing the bank vault with Batman
Speaker 1: might be able to sniff it out and when it
Speaker 1: comes to its solubility, infinite solubility, and water with slight
Speaker 1: evolution of heat, not necessarily boiling, but slight evolution defeat. Right,
Speaker 1: And so the the MSDS comes with these ratings. It's
Speaker 1: a great rating system. It's kind of like the the
Speaker 1: m P A A for acids. Know what you're getting
Speaker 1: ahead of time, Yeah, exactly. Um, the most of the
Speaker 1: ones we looked at use the JT. Baker s A
Speaker 1: f T data scores essentially given it. Like you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like character classes in Dungeons and Dragons. Right,
Speaker 1: it's health rating, it's flammability rating, reactivity rating, contact rating, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna deal with all these. But but as
Speaker 1: far as hydrochloric acid goes, it's health rating is a three,
Speaker 1: which is severe like a poison level zero, and flammability
Speaker 1: reactivity rating is a two. Contact rating is three that
Speaker 1: means it's severe. It's corrosive. Do not touch it, So
Speaker 1: you need to if you're handling this stuff in the lab,
Speaker 1: you need some protective measures in place. Yeah, it's highly corrosive,
Speaker 1: so it's dangerous for us to inhale if we we
Speaker 1: we should not come into contact with it on our eyes,
Speaker 1: on our skin, do not ingest it. Uh, you don't
Speaker 1: want to undergo chronic light exposure to it either. Um.
Speaker 1: And then oh yeah, when it's heated to decomposition, it
Speaker 1: emits toxic hydrogen chloride fumes, and we'll react with water
Speaker 1: or steam to produce heat and toxic and corrosive fumes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But of course, as I mentioned earlier, despite all this,
Speaker 1: you've got hydrochloric acid in your body. That's right, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the stomach acid. This is uh, this is
Speaker 1: part of you. And really it's important thing to keep
Speaker 1: in mind with acids in general. Like, acids are part
Speaker 1: of our chemical world. Acids are part of the chemistry
Speaker 1: of life. They're part of our biochemistry, uh, in varying degrees.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the even though we liked to position acid
Speaker 1: in that vat of of man made peril, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: really just a part of our world. So parietal cells
Speaker 1: produce hydrochloric acid in our body. It's a strong acid,
Speaker 1: helps you break down your food. The acid in your
Speaker 1: stomach is so concentrated that if you were to place
Speaker 1: a drop on a piece of wood, it would eat
Speaker 1: right through it. Really. Yeah, wow. And the G cells
Speaker 1: produce gastron, a hormone that facilitates the production of hydrochloric
Speaker 1: acid by the parietal cells, So the stomach, because of course,
Speaker 1: one of the big questions is, well, why doesn't the
Speaker 1: acid in our stomach consumers Right, Well, the stomach is
Speaker 1: producted by the epithelial cells, which produce and secrete a
Speaker 1: bicarbonate rich solution that coats the mucosa. Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: taking the method of saving the batman by dumping a
Speaker 1: bunch of baking soda into the vat. Yeah. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: putting in a base exactly. The bicarbonate is an alkaline.
Speaker 1: A base neutralizes the acid that's secreted by those parietal cells,
Speaker 1: producing water in the process. And this continuous supply lie
Speaker 1: of bicarbonate is the main way that your stomach protects
Speaker 1: itself from autodigestion um and the overall acidic environment if
Speaker 1: you're if you're tummy. So uh So, it sounds like
Speaker 1: this process of creating the base to neutralize it is
Speaker 1: not something you want going wrong in your body, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one you generally what a good a good balance
Speaker 1: in your stomach chemistry. Yeah, Okay, so hydrochloric acid, that's
Speaker 1: nothing to be toyed around with. But there are stronger
Speaker 1: and more dangerous acids out there, and I think maybe
Speaker 1: we should move on. So if if hydrochloric acid was
Speaker 1: sort of the I don't know, the riddler of the
Speaker 1: acid rogues gallery, I think it's time to move on
Speaker 1: to the joker. Yes, the joker would definitely be sulfuric acid, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is one I would say, of all the
Speaker 1: acids they're technical names, sulfuric acid is the one that
Speaker 1: is that is most commonly used in fiction. Granted not
Speaker 1: without a real deep understanding of what it is. But
Speaker 1: like the name itself sounds a little scary, soulf for
Speaker 1: it's it's hellish, right, sulfuric the the name itself sounds
Speaker 1: a little bit evil. Well, chemically, it's H two S
Speaker 1: O four, So that's hydrogen with sulfur and oxygen and
Speaker 1: it forms this molecule that is very very keen to protonate.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, so it's it's a clear, oily liquid. It's odorless,
Speaker 1: so sorry bank vault dude. Yeah, both of these so
Speaker 1: far clear? Right? Yeah? Yeah? Nothing green? Why why not green?
Speaker 1: Or or it's also mistable with water, which means that
Speaker 1: it forms a homogeneous mixture when added to water, liberates
Speaker 1: a fair amount of heat. Um. And it's highly corrosive
Speaker 1: and dangerous to humans just across the board, much like
Speaker 1: hydrochloric acid. So how does it compare in terms of
Speaker 1: the ratings? So hydrochloric acid, for for the health rating,
Speaker 1: we had a three, and for the contact corrosivity rating
Speaker 1: we had a three, right right three on both yeah,
Speaker 1: and had a had a two for reactivity and a
Speaker 1: zero for flammability. This time around we have another zero
Speaker 1: for flammability. Um. However, reactivity went up from a two
Speaker 1: to the to a three, so we have severe water
Speaker 1: reactivity here. Uh. And then as far as health rating goes,
Speaker 1: we have another three, so it's just a severe poisonous.
Speaker 1: But contact rating goes up from three to four from
Speaker 1: severe to extreme, so it's extremely corrosive. How do they
Speaker 1: decide what word goes with that? I might say severe
Speaker 1: is worse than extreme? Well, I don't know. It's it's
Speaker 1: gonna be specific to the JT. Baker s a f
Speaker 1: T data score. I guess because I need a good
Speaker 1: poet to go through and annotate this data sheet instead
Speaker 1: of like a single word like a nice description exactly
Speaker 1: everyone is encountered with it, or an example from a movie,
Speaker 1: right like this is a you know, this is a
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat two level ascid. Yeah, so if you're going
Speaker 1: for this movie kind of asset, I think we're we're
Speaker 1: getting more into the territory here of assets that are
Speaker 1: really gonna maybe not be of exactly like the movie
Speaker 1: acid you're used to, but get closer to that than
Speaker 1: than many other things would. Now, some other bad stuff
Speaker 1: about sulphuric acid. When heated to decomposition, it produces toxic
Speaker 1: fumes of oxides of sulfur uh. It will react with
Speaker 1: water or steam to produce toxic and corrosive fumes. It
Speaker 1: reacts with the carbonates to generate carbon dioxide gas, and
Speaker 1: with cyanides and sulfides to form poisonous hydrogen cyanide and
Speaker 1: hydrogen sulfide, respectively. It all sounds lovely. Yeah, So again
Speaker 1: that's something though that is often I don't feel like
Speaker 1: that that's utilized the the the the resulting toxic gas
Speaker 1: of acid interactions in films, like they were so concerned
Speaker 1: with what happens when the xenomorph blood gets on you
Speaker 1: or your armor or the floor. But how about any
Speaker 1: resulting fumes. Well, yeah, we're we're always so much more
Speaker 1: concerned with liquids than with gases. And what one example
Speaker 1: is volcanoes in movies. You know, volcanoes in real life.
Speaker 1: I think they're way more likely to suffocate and kill
Speaker 1: you with gases emitted or or by covering you in
Speaker 1: ash and and ejecta and stuff like that. But what
Speaker 1: you see in the movies is the lava. People are
Speaker 1: running away from liquid lava rolling down the hill toward them.
Speaker 1: Your volcano is very likely to kill you, but it's
Speaker 1: very not likely to kill you that way. Another thing
Speaker 1: that this is going off topic a little bit, but
Speaker 1: flamethrowers in a confined space, it's a staple of our entertainment,
Speaker 1: and yet it is such a bad idea to just
Speaker 1: rapidly consume. I mean, a flamethrower in general is a
Speaker 1: bad idea. A real flamethrower way to suffocate yourself. That's
Speaker 1: a great way to sufcate yourself, and it's rarely, rarely
Speaker 1: is that explored. The only example I can think of
Speaker 1: off hand is that there is a wonderful Nazi zombie
Speaker 1: film from the seventies or eighties titled shock Waves, and
Speaker 1: there's a scene where they don't have a flamethrower, but
Speaker 1: they light some flares, I think to ward off the creatures,
Speaker 1: and they're in a confined space and it just eats
Speaker 1: up all the oxygen and everybody's like gasping for breath.
Speaker 1: And I remember the time thinking, Ah, thank you movie
Speaker 1: for for for thinking a little bit. That's smart. Okay,
Speaker 1: But back to sulfuric acid. So sulfuric acid, based on
Speaker 1: how dangerous it sounds, You're you're probably never going to
Speaker 1: have this in your home, right, well, not necessarily. Now
Speaker 1: you might be able to get sulfuric acid in the
Speaker 1: home and some deluded uh concentrations. So a nine study
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery that
Speaker 1: I came across was called cutaneous burns caused by sulfuric
Speaker 1: acid drain cleaner. Yeah, pretty horrible. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the commercial drain cleaner you're gonna be getting is actually
Speaker 1: going to be based on a strong base rather than
Speaker 1: a strong acid, So it might have something kind of
Speaker 1: like lie in it to dissolve uh to dissolve materials
Speaker 1: and the drain to do some some alkaline hydrolysis and
Speaker 1: clear it out, get all that hair and gunk out
Speaker 1: of there. But also there are some preparations made with
Speaker 1: strong acids, such as highly concentrated solutions of sulf furic acid,
Speaker 1: and and some people will sell these and you can
Speaker 1: buy them. And this has caused accidental and sometimes intentional
Speaker 1: burns in the home. So this study looked at a
Speaker 1: period of thirteen years ending in May nine six, looking
Speaker 1: at children and adults who sustained sulfuric acid burns in
Speaker 1: the home through products like these, And it looked at
Speaker 1: twenty one patients. There were thirteen kids and eight adults.
Speaker 1: And I just want to read the results. They say
Speaker 1: in eight instances the sulfuric acid burn was accidental, whereas
Speaker 1: in thirteen cases sulfuric acid was used as a weapon
Speaker 1: media and total body surface area burned was five percent
Speaker 1: or a range of one. Approximately fifty percent of burns
Speaker 1: involved the face and the neck. Skin grafting was required
Speaker 1: in fourteen patients or sixty six percent. And it's estimated
Speaker 1: that nationwide, approximately three thousand injuries per year are related
Speaker 1: to drain cleaners and that one third of these involved
Speaker 1: cutaneous burns. So this is, uh, this is one kind
Speaker 1: of scary fact about what sulfuric acid can do outside
Speaker 1: of the lab. And this does remind me that in um,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of films and TV, and and
Speaker 1: certainly in horror literature, uh, drain cleaner is is often
Speaker 1: used that kind of household horror. This thing that is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, when you used correctly, is certainly just a
Speaker 1: part of our lives and we don't think about it,
Speaker 1: but if you turn it around, it becomes this horrible
Speaker 1: in human thing. And uh, and I should also point
Speaker 1: out of view some people might have might have missed
Speaker 1: this in this episode because it's kind of maybe we're
Speaker 1: bearing the lead a little bit. But the most recent
Speaker 1: Creepy Posta episode that Christian and I did gets into
Speaker 1: the into the issue of acid attacks and the restoration
Speaker 1: of surgical restoration of individuals who have experienced fact, so
Speaker 1: it mentions the like the grafting that was eaching in
Speaker 1: this study. Uh and so yeah, I mean that's a
Speaker 1: horrible thing to think about it in real life being
Speaker 1: used as a weapon probably doesn't behave exactly the same
Speaker 1: way we do see the movie acid behaving are certainly
Speaker 1: not as rapidly, but at the same time can cause
Speaker 1: it very severe burns and damage to the body. So
Speaker 1: it's not something to mess around with indeed. But next,
Speaker 1: let's look at one more rogue in our in our
Speaker 1: rogues gallery of dangerous acids, and I think this one
Speaker 1: is going to be one of the most interesting, and
Speaker 1: this is hydrofluoric acid or h F made of a
Speaker 1: bond of hydrogen and fluorine. Let's look at the MSDS
Speaker 1: scores here on this one. So health rating. Our previous
Speaker 1: two examples were both three, which were severe. This one
Speaker 1: is a four. This one is extremely poisonous. Uh. This
Speaker 1: one also has a zero on flammability. Uh. It's reactivity
Speaker 1: rating is a mere two, so that's down from three
Speaker 1: that we had on sulphuric acid. And then its contact
Speaker 1: rating is a four. Extremely corrosive, just like sulfuric acid. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's a colorless, fuming liquid. Uh. It has a
Speaker 1: very very acrid odor. Do not breathe the fumes and
Speaker 1: it is infinitely soluble. Now, this this stuff, because of
Speaker 1: the nature of it, the hydrogen fluorian bond or the
Speaker 1: hydrogen fluoride. It has a very unique sort of reactive
Speaker 1: profile that's right on contact with metals. It liberates hydrogen
Speaker 1: gas on heating to decomposition. It can yield toxic fumes
Speaker 1: of fluorides, and it attacks glass and other silicon containing compounds.
Speaker 1: It reacts with silica to produce silicon tetrafluoride, which is
Speaker 1: also a hazardous colorless gas. Yeah, now we should linger
Speaker 1: on that last fact for a moment, because what do
Speaker 1: we say here? Hydrogen fluoride can dissolve glass. Yeah. Most
Speaker 1: of the time. Glass is great for storing chemicals because
Speaker 1: it is very nonreactive. You can put stuff in a
Speaker 1: glass container and it will sit there. It doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't react with what's inside it. Glass is made of
Speaker 1: mostly silicon dioxide silica, same stuff is you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of rocks and sand. But hydrogen fluoride smashes up
Speaker 1: those silicon dioxide bonds in order to replace them with
Speaker 1: silicon fluorine bonds. And so for this reason you can't
Speaker 1: store it in glass. You have to store it in
Speaker 1: a special container, often one made out of something that
Speaker 1: won't react with it, like polyethylene plastic. But a few
Speaker 1: other materials will work. And I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: a couple of videos that I found on the Internet
Speaker 1: that are very interesting dealing with hydrogen fluoride. And if
Speaker 1: you want to watch these, if you're in a physician,
Speaker 1: to watch these as you listen to the podcast episode.
Speaker 1: We will include links to these on the landing page
Speaker 1: for this episode Stuffable your Mind dot com. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: these were done by a group that puts out chemistry
Speaker 1: videos on the Internet called periodic videos or periodic table videos.
Speaker 1: It's out of believe, the Chemistry Department of University of Nottingham,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of fun They do some
Speaker 1: experiments with some very unsettling chemicals. One of them was
Speaker 1: hydrogen fluoride, where they they decided to put a light
Speaker 1: bulb in the hydrogen fluoride. So it's a live light
Speaker 1: bulb with power running to it, lighting up half submerged
Speaker 1: in a container of hydrogen fluoride. And what do you know,
Speaker 1: after a little while sitting in the solution, the glass
Speaker 1: part of the light bulb breaks off, and it breaks
Speaker 1: off in a very strange way, cleanly, with a circle
Speaker 1: around where the surface of the acid is is lining
Speaker 1: the outside of the glass bulb. It just kind of
Speaker 1: shears it off as if it had been scored and
Speaker 1: then removed. And that, of course is pretty freakingly freaky
Speaker 1: because then the filament immediately comes off and it starts
Speaker 1: kind of sparking. But then they did another video which
Speaker 1: I thought was really interesting, and this one's really worth
Speaker 1: a watch. So this is comparing the flesh dissolving properties
Speaker 1: of three different acids, actually the three we've just talked about.
Speaker 1: This is the one I watched, and uh, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a lot of it's fantastic. So in all three cases,
Speaker 1: what they did is they got a raw chicken leg
Speaker 1: and they suspended it from a string partially submerged in
Speaker 1: the acid. Uh. And then the states of the three
Speaker 1: chicken legs are monitored. And the three acids they did,
Speaker 1: like we said, are the ones we've just talked about.
Speaker 1: Hydrogen chloride or HCl, sulfuric acid or H two s
Speaker 1: O four, and then hydrofluoric acid or HF. Now, the
Speaker 1: the sort of the profile we saw affecting the chicken
Speaker 1: leg was very similar for the hydrogen chloride and the
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid. Wouldn't you say, yes? Uh, yeah, they seem
Speaker 1: to do the same thing, which is that after about
Speaker 1: five minutes, not really any noticeable changes. I'm sure if
Speaker 1: that chicken leg could feel it probably wouldn't feel good,
Speaker 1: But you don't really notice any burning on the outside.
Speaker 1: After thirty minutes, still nothing really noticeable. So this already
Speaker 1: is not exactly lining up with what we know about
Speaker 1: movie acid right right, And these are best in our
Speaker 1: brightest athletes, yeah, exactly. But overnight some really interesting stuff
Speaker 1: started to happen with these two. So the previously clear
Speaker 1: solution takes on a dark pigment and the part of
Speaker 1: the chicken that has been submerged has turned into this dark,
Speaker 1: viscous jelly that drips off of the bone when you
Speaker 1: lifted up. Uh. And then after that they went a
Speaker 1: whole hog where they cut the string and just dunked
Speaker 1: the whole chicken leg in and it's gross. It just
Speaker 1: continues to darken the acid solution, turn it into this gloopy,
Speaker 1: dark and jelly, and it it sort of begins to
Speaker 1: liquify the outer layers of the chicken leg. Don't know
Speaker 1: what what would have happened if they just kept it
Speaker 1: going for weeks. After after a day, it was not
Speaker 1: looking good. It was thoroughly unappetizing, that is for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know. People just don't for some reason, you
Speaker 1: want to eat a piece of chicken. You don't want
Speaker 1: to eat some chicken jelly, but yet you like grape jelly. Yeah. Well, um,
Speaker 1: well there you know. There are different jellifications of flesh
Speaker 1: that are consumed arthur In, like French busine. Oh I suppose, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. What's it called aspect? Yeah, okay, moving on
Speaker 1: now now, So that's hydrogen chloride and sulfuric acid. But
Speaker 1: the real strange one contributing here is the hydrofluoric acid,
Speaker 1: this being the one that we just covered, the one
Speaker 1: that dissolves glass. Yeah, and so similar profile at the beginning.
Speaker 1: After five to thirty minutes, really not any significant observed changes.
Speaker 1: Like we said, probably if you could be that chicken
Speaker 1: leg it would not be pleasant. But just looking at it,
Speaker 1: nothing strange seems to have occurred. But again, overnight, some
Speaker 1: really crazy stuff starts to happen. Unlike the other two
Speaker 1: acid solutions, which darkened and took on the red red pigment, uh,
Speaker 1: this acid solution remains clear and the part of the
Speaker 1: chicken legs submerged in the acid has sort of partially
Speaker 1: disappeared and has a white discoloration along the sheared away surface.
Speaker 1: It looked to me, I don't know what you thought
Speaker 1: about this, It looked to me like frost or freezer burn. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did have that kind of appearance. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: also the entire rest of the leg has become discolored,
Speaker 1: so all of the red pigment in the soul it
Speaker 1: looks like it's just been drained away. And even the
Speaker 1: part way up out of the acid has become pale
Speaker 1: white with greenish spots. It's lost its pink pigment. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then after they dropped the whole thing, and when
Speaker 1: they cut the string, it looks almost like extremely overcooked
Speaker 1: boiled chicken, pale white all over except for a little
Speaker 1: part sticking out which looks green and disease like they
Speaker 1: just the worst example of steamer tray lunch room chicken
Speaker 1: legs you could possibly imagine. Yeah, And so I do
Speaker 1: recommend the the video because the chemist who they talked
Speaker 1: to in the video has a theory about why this happens.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to repeat his theory, but it's
Speaker 1: worth checking out. It's pretty interesting. He also has wonderful
Speaker 1: like frizzy white hair. He's just a fabulous example of
Speaker 1: of a British scientist. Yeah, all right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break and when we come back we will
Speaker 1: get into the realm of super acids and then we
Speaker 1: will reconverge with the Xeno morph. Hey, everybody, trips to
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Speaker 1: in stuff that Stamps dot com inter stuff and start
Speaker 1: mailing things. Okay, here's a question. When does an acid
Speaker 1: become a super acid? We've talked about superheroes at the
Speaker 1: beginning of Batman is a Is he a hero or superhero? Well,
Speaker 1: he doesn't really have superpowers, but I guess he counts
Speaker 1: as a superhero. Oh yeah, he's got the costume, he's
Speaker 1: got the technology. So yeah, maybe if these other acids
Speaker 1: we just discussed, dissolving chicken legs won't dissolve a Batman
Speaker 1: fast enough. You need a super acid to dissolve a superhero.
Speaker 1: It seems like the kind of thing is super villain.
Speaker 1: Would need to look into it exactly. So what is
Speaker 1: a super acid? Well, super acid is an acid that
Speaker 1: is as strong as or stronger than, one hundred percent
Speaker 1: pure sulfuric acid. Uh, And why would you ever have
Speaker 1: anything like this? What's the point of it? Well, acids
Speaker 1: are an incredibly important catalyst in the chemical industry, which
Speaker 1: is maybe why they're in, you know, the industrial settings,
Speaker 1: some big open vets. Yeah, but they have. They have
Speaker 1: a number of applications and potential applications in fuel cell
Speaker 1: technology and the chemical and petroleum industry. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: acids don't usually react with hydrocarbons, oil, petroleum, but super
Speaker 1: acids do. Yeah, And so we figured it's worth looking
Speaker 1: up what's the strongest acid known to humankind? There is
Speaker 1: an answer to this question, right, It is fluoro antimonic
Speaker 1: acid or h s b F six. Then this is,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, the strongest super acid on earth.
Speaker 1: So what's the deal with it? So this is made
Speaker 1: by combining hydrofluoric acid with antimony pentafluoride. And this is
Speaker 1: gonna sound crazy, but it the resulting acid is billions
Speaker 1: of times stronger than sulfuric acid. Yeah, it's billions and
Speaker 1: billions of times or just many orders of magnitude stronger
Speaker 1: than sulfuric acid. That is crazy obviously something we don't
Speaker 1: exactly know. Like I couldn't find any videos that were
Speaker 1: clearly real of people dealing with this stuff. I couldn't
Speaker 1: find a lot of first person accounts of people dealing
Speaker 1: with it. There there's some some research materials about it,
Speaker 1: but they don't really get into, uh, into what exactly
Speaker 1: would happen by combining this with stuff. I imagine if
Speaker 1: you dipped a batman in it, some some stuff would
Speaker 1: go down. Yeah, I mean, we found numbers that were
Speaker 1: kind of all over the place, and there's no MSDS
Speaker 1: score for this. There's no s A f T data
Speaker 1: on this, so we can't we can't even like look
Speaker 1: at numbers that put it, uh, you know, to make
Speaker 1: a comparison between it and acid. Right, But just based
Speaker 1: on on what we do know about it, I think
Speaker 1: it's safe to assume that this stuff is incredibly dangerous
Speaker 1: and dipping a batman and it would have some some consequences.
Speaker 1: But but you might be wondering, you know, with with
Speaker 1: an acid that strong, something that that reactive, how would
Speaker 1: you even store it? Right? Because just the hydrogen, uh,
Speaker 1: just with the Jeff, you've got this problem where you
Speaker 1: you you're dissolving glass containers. Uh so what do you
Speaker 1: use to story? This wasn't an interesting piece of information
Speaker 1: I found cited in several sources. You can actually store
Speaker 1: it with something you keep around the house. It's something
Speaker 1: with a solid bond that really doesn't want to let
Speaker 1: go and bond with other stuff. It's teflon ptf E,
Speaker 1: so polytetrafluora ethylene. It's a ptf E and that's just
Speaker 1: a a fluorine carbon bond molecule. That's it's It's very monogamous.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't want to go bond with other stuff. Interesting. Alright,
Speaker 1: So if you are battling a lizard ninja that may
Speaker 1: or may not have um super acid in its body,
Speaker 1: where your teflon ninja costut to battle it? Exactly? Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what Batman uses, I bet sustain his encounters with
Speaker 1: vats of acid is a teflon batsuit. So this would
Speaker 1: be what McBain's underwear was made off in that that
Speaker 1: scene we were talking about from The Simpsons, because when
Speaker 1: the flood of acid and throws him through I think
Speaker 1: mill houses, uh trailer, that the acid like quickly eats
Speaker 1: off all of his clothing except for his underwear. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that was done for a network censorship reasons
Speaker 1: rather than than scientific accuracy reasons, but it could be
Speaker 1: could be uh teflon underwear protects you from the acid,
Speaker 1: though I don't know if that would work with every acid.
Speaker 1: That's true. I just have to assume if it works
Speaker 1: for the strongest asset in the world, is going to
Speaker 1: be generally pretty effective. Alright, So, Joe, at this point,
Speaker 1: we've we've talked about what Hollywood acids look like, we've
Speaker 1: talked about the real properties of acids, and we're already
Speaker 1: seeing how they don't really match up to our Batman
Speaker 1: dissolving needs. Doesn't mean they're not dangerous something that are
Speaker 1: certainly credibly dangerous, but they don't behave exactly like we
Speaker 1: we want them to to make Batman burn. Well, are
Speaker 1: there other things in our natural world that do behave
Speaker 1: like these fictionalized substances? Well, still probably not exactly. You're
Speaker 1: not going to get the green, bubbling, instant dissolving you
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But in many cases, I think if
Speaker 1: you want a chemical that burns through human flesh more
Speaker 1: like it does in the movies, what you want is
Speaker 1: not necessarily a strong acid, but a strong base on
Speaker 1: the opposite end of the pH scale, such as LIE,
Speaker 1: which would be usually sodium hydroxide in a O H
Speaker 1: or potassium hydroxide KOH. And so I wanna bring to
Speaker 1: your mind a scene from a movie you might or
Speaker 1: might not have seen it. You've seen Fight Club, right, Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: you remember the scene in Fight Club where Brad Pitt
Speaker 1: and Edward Norton they're sitting around a table and they're
Speaker 1: making soap because this is a plot point in the movie,
Speaker 1: and one of the ingredients in making soap, and this
Speaker 1: is true is lie. And in the scene, brad Pitt
Speaker 1: he takes Edward Norton's hand and he kisses him on
Speaker 1: the hand, and then he pours lie across the wet
Speaker 1: spot where his lips were, and this causes a reaction
Speaker 1: that begins to burn Edward Norton's hand. And for the
Speaker 1: sake of you know, kind of macho and somewhat grandiose
Speaker 1: sense of carpet d m, brad Pitt convinces Edward Norton
Speaker 1: to just sit there and endure the pain, the chemical burn,
Speaker 1: instead of washing off the lie. And he also tells
Speaker 1: him that washing it off with water would only make
Speaker 1: it worse, and eventually he uses vinegar to neutralize the acid. Now,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't take your chemical safety information from a podcast.
Speaker 1: We are not chemical safety experts, and you should always
Speaker 1: consult those real experts before dealing with strong acids or bases.
Speaker 1: But from everything I've read, Brad Pitt's wisdom about the
Speaker 1: vinegar here is not exactly true. Uh. It is true
Speaker 1: that a strong base like LIE is activated in the
Speaker 1: presence of water, and that you can use acids to
Speaker 1: neutralize bases. But if you've got LIE on you, my
Speaker 1: non expert opinion is that your first priorities just get
Speaker 1: it off. You get it off your skin as fast
Speaker 1: as possible, rather than running around looking for a creative
Speaker 1: lemons to squeeze on and neutralize it. Washing it off
Speaker 1: with water would be one way, but you just want
Speaker 1: it off your skin as fast as possible. Also worth
Speaker 1: pointing out that commercial vinegar is mostly water. It's acetic acid,
Speaker 1: but it's highly diluted with water. But yes, in any case,
Speaker 1: this is an example of what strong bases can do
Speaker 1: to the skin, and in some ways the scene is
Speaker 1: kind of accurate. Like a strong base like a lie
Speaker 1: in the presence of water on the skin can definitely
Speaker 1: burn you. It can cause bad chemical burns, and can
Speaker 1: definitely truly dissolve human flesh under the right conditions. So
Speaker 1: this is one thing we also see the movie acid
Speaker 1: being used for. It's like the Mafia hitman in the
Speaker 1: movie have some vat of acid in their basement and
Speaker 1: they whack somebody and they put him into the vat
Speaker 1: of acid and it dissolves them. But studies have actually
Speaker 1: shown that if you really want to dissolve a human body.
Speaker 1: We're not trying to give anybody pointers on how to
Speaker 1: commit murder, and of evidence is just science presented by
Speaker 1: the Mafia Science Institute. Apparently the better way to do
Speaker 1: that would be with a strong base rather than a
Speaker 1: strong acid for for fully dissolving flesh. And one piece
Speaker 1: of evidence for this is something we've actually talked about
Speaker 1: on the podcast before. And you remember the episode we
Speaker 1: did last October about the future of the dealing with
Speaker 1: human remains and green burials and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: so the method, one method we talked about is known
Speaker 1: as alkaline hydrolysis, and this is a method of disposing
Speaker 1: of condevers. It's used by lots of medical facilities, and
Speaker 1: there's increasing interest in using it as a cheaper and
Speaker 1: greener alternative to traditional burial incremation. And essentially it goes
Speaker 1: like this. You put the body into a pressurized chamber
Speaker 1: that contains a mixture of water and lie so here's
Speaker 1: your strong base, and then you heat the chamber to
Speaker 1: around a hundred and sixty degrease celsius or you know,
Speaker 1: over three hundred degrees fahrenheit, and the body is liquefied
Speaker 1: in just a few hours, and it can be washed
Speaker 1: down the drain and any remaining bone fragments that can
Speaker 1: be pulverized and dealt with however you want. But now,
Speaker 1: obviously the heat and the pressure here are playing a
Speaker 1: big role in what's going on. But the strong base
Speaker 1: is crucial. It's an m v P dissolver of organic
Speaker 1: materials such as a human body or or an animal
Speaker 1: carcass or a batman. And so one of my suggestions
Speaker 1: is that maybe we should start replacing movie acids in
Speaker 1: our fiction with movie bases. I think part of the
Speaker 1: problem is that acid sounds cooler, acid is more even
Speaker 1: though I think most people know that you have acids
Speaker 1: and bases. Uh, it's like the just the word itself acid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: instead of like base, you know, like which one, which
Speaker 1: one is just like linguistically potent? Yeah, for for fictional purposes,
Speaker 1: which one sounds scarier to be protonated or to be deprotonated? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then of course acid. I mean we talk about, oh,
Speaker 1: well that person has a really you know, acidic attitude
Speaker 1: or something. You know, it's like, it's we we Acid
Speaker 1: is just going to make your sentence that much stronger.
Speaker 1: It's gonna make your threat to the superhero that much stronger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it has more sentence, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: it might not be as great a wonderful dissolver of
Speaker 1: organic material or something like lie. But yeah, I'm ready
Speaker 1: Robert for you to take us back to the Nostromo.
Speaker 1: All right, well, you know, the my motion detector is
Speaker 1: going off here. I think it's actually coming from inside
Speaker 1: the room at this point. So yeah, let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about the xenomore. Yeah, okay, so we mentioned this earlier
Speaker 1: in the episode. This is one fantastic example of movie ascid.
Speaker 1: I think it's probably my favorite movie asset is the
Speaker 1: Aliens Blood Right, Yeah, I mean, it's so well utilized
Speaker 1: and uh and and feels like a real threat and
Speaker 1: helps to just position the creature. You know, we can
Speaker 1: barely touch it, we can barely wound it, and when
Speaker 1: we do wounding, it might kill us. Yeah. So we've
Speaker 1: described sort of what happens in the scene in the
Speaker 1: first scene where these that there. There are many different
Speaker 1: ways the asset appears throughout all of the movies that
Speaker 1: have aliens in them, but it typically always burns and
Speaker 1: dissolves things. It's it's you don't want to get it
Speaker 1: on you. It might kill you, might burn you. But
Speaker 1: is is there anything we can relate this acid too
Speaker 1: in the real world? Could an organism really behave this way?
Speaker 1: And what might it's acid blood? Be ah? Well, this
Speaker 1: is a fantastic question, um, But before I get into it,
Speaker 1: I do want to mention that, as a fun note,
Speaker 1: there is an older monster, perhaps the most famous monster
Speaker 1: in Western literature, that also boasted corrosive blood, and that's Grendel.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Yeah, it's been so long since I've read
Speaker 1: from Bayol. It's been so long, Yes, since I've read Beowulf.
Speaker 1: I've certainly read things since then that have Grendel in them.
Speaker 1: But it's been so long I didn't I didn't even
Speaker 1: realize this. I have sort of rediscovered this in our research.
Speaker 1: This is crazy. So, of course Beowulf is a classic
Speaker 1: of Anglo Saxon literature Old English literature, where you know
Speaker 1: you've got this epic. The hero Beowulf goes into slay
Speaker 1: the monster that's been harassing this Uh. I don't know,
Speaker 1: would you even call it a town, this encampment of humans? Uh?
Speaker 1: And so what's the deal? So he goes into slay
Speaker 1: Grendel and he encounters some acid blood. Yeah, basically like
Speaker 1: he ends up getting this special sword, and then at
Speaker 1: the end he he's earlier. He rips off Grindel's arm,
Speaker 1: wounds him, follows Grindel back to his layer, cuts his
Speaker 1: head off, and then the blood from the from the beheading,
Speaker 1: it melts the blade. This is a translation, obviously, but
Speaker 1: the sword blade began then the blood having touched it,
Speaker 1: contracting and shriveling with battle icicles. It was a wonderful
Speaker 1: marvel that had melted entirely. So it's my understanding that
Speaker 1: you could kind of interpret this is maybe a blood
Speaker 1: is really hot and just melted it um you know,
Speaker 1: as in a you know, a great fire, or that
Speaker 1: it's acidic, depending on your interpretation. Either way, that's that's
Speaker 1: quite uh an adaptation on the part of the Grindel organism.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I wonder if this is the oldest single
Speaker 1: version of the creature that spits toxic chemicals. Maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't think of another mythic creature that
Speaker 1: has this fire. But yeah, there's certainly fire breathing, but
Speaker 1: as far as acids or something that is corrosive that is,
Speaker 1: you know, destroying the weapons that are used against it,
Speaker 1: I can't think of one offhand. Yeah. Crazy. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: we we should return to our modern example though, So
Speaker 1: imagine Beowulf goes into slay a xenomorph. He'd have exactly
Speaker 1: the same problem, right, The xenomorph queens in there. She's
Speaker 1: been harassing the town. He takes in his special sword,
Speaker 1: he lops off its head, and the sword melts. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: the sword melts, and you got the job done. But yeah,
Speaker 1: your magical weapon is ruined. Yeah, maybe spraying him on
Speaker 1: the face in the process and killing him getting the
Speaker 1: last laugh after all. Oh yeah, well, you know it's
Speaker 1: Beowulf's they probably dodge it. I always have this thing,
Speaker 1: I always since sympathize with Grendel. Uh. Yet to see
Speaker 1: an adaptation of the story where I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Beawolf is a good dude, I can get behind him.
Speaker 1: I always sympathize with the monster. Well, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: Grendel's the loner. Well, maybe one of the first places
Speaker 1: we should look to see what the aliens blood might
Speaker 1: be would be to look behind the scenes in the
Speaker 1: movie and see, Okay, so how do they create the
Speaker 1: special effect in the In the alien movies, you see
Speaker 1: the aliens spilled their blood like in the first movie
Speaker 1: in Ridley Scott's film, you see it's spill on the floor.
Speaker 1: It burns through the floor and it just keeps burning
Speaker 1: through floors until finally it stops. What what was going
Speaker 1: on there? Well, I found some accounts online of the
Speaker 1: where this special effect came from, and supposedly it was
Speaker 1: created by the alien special effects supervisor Brian Johnson, and
Speaker 1: the the acid effect was essentially a combination of some
Speaker 1: various chemicals and then that was applied to and this
Speaker 1: is pretty clever styrofoam floors they just made. They made
Speaker 1: styrofoam ship hull. I don't know what styrofoam stuff that
Speaker 1: would be the floors of the ship, and then spray
Speaker 1: painted its silver to make it look like it was metal.
Speaker 1: What's the name of the company, the corporation while wait, wait,
Speaker 1: waitl in Utahi and maybe they're just super cheap and
Speaker 1: they're like styrofoam. That's great. I'm sure that's what it was.
Speaker 1: But in any sense, so what was it made of? Well,
Speaker 1: the blood they had was made of chloroform, acetone, cyclohexylamine,
Speaker 1: and acetic acid, which is vinegar pretty much. Acetic acid
Speaker 1: is deluded to create vinegar and then some other compounds.
Speaker 1: But I thought this is funny because so acetic acid, yes,
Speaker 1: of course is an acid diluting diluted in in water
Speaker 1: to make vinegar with some other flavorings. Acetone is not
Speaker 1: an acid, that's neutral neutral pH seven uh, Cyclohexulamine is
Speaker 1: a base. And then and then of course the head
Speaker 1: chloroform and stuff. And apparently it eats through styrofoam all right,
Speaker 1: but it probably wouldn't eat through a real spacecraft's hull.
Speaker 1: And one of the big reasons it eats through styrofoam
Speaker 1: is probably the presence of acetone. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen videos of what happens when you pour
Speaker 1: acetone on a styrofoam wighead or something like that. I
Speaker 1: don't think I've seen those videos. If you ever want
Speaker 1: to make a head melt for a bunch of children,
Speaker 1: this is a fun party trick. I don't don't get
Speaker 1: any of the Well, I'll keep that in mind from
Speaker 1: my son's a fifth birthday. Yeah, so like, here's the
Speaker 1: head of your enemy and you just pour some massa
Speaker 1: tone on that styrofoam head. It's just oh no, it melts.
Speaker 1: So it works great for a special effect, but probably
Speaker 1: would not work for a real organism that wanted to
Speaker 1: melt through metal and plastic and all all of the
Speaker 1: other stuff that probably makes up a ship. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: one is a good Uh, it's a good verb to
Speaker 1: use here, because of course that brings up the question, well,
Speaker 1: how does this occur? It? Is this an evolved trade?
Speaker 1: Is this an engineered traite? But what is the origin
Speaker 1: of the xenomorph? Then? Uh? Depending on how these work.
Speaker 1: But I have I have a couple of proposals here, Okay,
Speaker 1: as to what could be going on with the xenomore.
Speaker 1: So my my first more modest and explosive proposition is
Speaker 1: this UH. And I'm sure that this doesn't match up
Speaker 1: to everybody's UH interpretation of the franchise or every entry
Speaker 1: of the franchise. But here's the Okay, So we see
Speaker 1: the thing bleeding acid when it's hard, right, you shoot it,
Speaker 1: cut whatever acid shoots out. And of course we also
Speaker 1: see it using the acid offensively occasions such as when
Speaker 1: that face hugger UH melt through the glass dome on
Speaker 1: the helmet. Oh yeah, I didn't have to cut itself
Speaker 1: to do right if somehow just utilized treated this. So
Speaker 1: what if this isn't the creature's blood at all, really
Speaker 1: not properly, but rather an acid stored throughout the body
Speaker 1: to react to physical harm UH that in turn harms
Speaker 1: the attacker. That's interesting because it wouldn't have to be
Speaker 1: the blood, would it. You wouldn't be This wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to be the substance that's circulating molecular oxygen to the
Speaker 1: body tissues, right, It wouldn't be serving other purposes in
Speaker 1: the body. It would be there expressly to rupture during
Speaker 1: physical harm to UH, to harm or destroy the attacker.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, we see something very similar, really
Speaker 1: identical in terrestrial termites and ants who also serve a queen.
Speaker 1: You know, they also I mean that the termite had
Speaker 1: a huge influence on especially aliens. So um, so we
Speaker 1: call this sub process this practice autopsis, and this is
Speaker 1: the process by which a natural world organism destroys itself
Speaker 1: via the internal rupturing of an oregon or gland that
Speaker 1: in turn ruptures the skin. So it's a purely muscular
Speaker 1: exercise caused by deliberate contractions around the engorged tissue. Fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's crazy because this is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that apparently evolved from pooping on your enemy. Like
Speaker 1: what started off is like poop on the enemy when
Speaker 1: they attacked and defensive defecation. But then it becomes like,
Speaker 1: if you can't get that poop out of the ain
Speaker 1: is fast enough, just like make it rupture through your body.
Speaker 1: And that has steadily evolved over time into more complex
Speaker 1: modes of self rupturing and the body buster par excellence
Speaker 1: here is Neo caapa termes tarracula, and this is um.
Speaker 1: This is a fabulous organism. So the species workers grow
Speaker 1: abdominal sacks of toxic blue crystals throughout their lives. But
Speaker 1: these explosive backpack to some studies refer to them, are
Speaker 1: are most pronounced and elderly workers. So so as they
Speaker 1: become less useful to the colony, and that sort of
Speaker 1: turn into the suicide bombers exactly like you know you
Speaker 1: don't have you have dull and useless mannibles, you really know,
Speaker 1: not that much use, but you've become a stockpile for
Speaker 1: toxic substances, and that becomes your purpose when enemies invade
Speaker 1: the termite mound. Uh, the the end they just rushed for,
Speaker 1: where the invaders then bite into their bodies, and that's
Speaker 1: when the blue crystals combine with salivary secretions to produce
Speaker 1: a deadly chemical weapon. Huh. So that would mean that
Speaker 1: the the xenomorph here would simply boast a system of
Speaker 1: pressurized acid tubes and it's it is merely the rupture
Speaker 1: of those tubes that we see, uh, and and is
Speaker 1: therefore an act of autopices. So this would be like
Speaker 1: highly concentrated stomach acid or something else that has evolved
Speaker 1: into this defensive mode. Yeah, and of course we do
Speaker 1: see from our own stomach. So, like we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: that it's possible for a body to contain within it
Speaker 1: some uh, some concentration of acid that would be very
Speaker 1: damaging if we encountered it externally or in the wrong
Speaker 1: part of the body. You just need specialized cells along
Speaker 1: whatever you know, body's tissues containing it to to buffer
Speaker 1: it essentially to keep it, uh from reacting with the
Speaker 1: rest of the body exactly. Now, of course, all of
Speaker 1: this is taking a very terrestrial approach to it. It's
Speaker 1: taking a very carbon biased, water biased approach. But of
Speaker 1: course not all modes of life, not all biochemistry is
Speaker 1: out there, are necessarily based on carbon or based on water.
Speaker 1: So we might have to take it a bit bit further.
Speaker 1: What sort of organism might have blood that is either
Speaker 1: incidentally or adaptively corrosive at least to our sort of flesh. Well,
Speaker 1: perhaps they're silicon based life forms as opposed to carbon based.
Speaker 1: So even here on Earth we have solicit acid, which
Speaker 1: is very weak acid in our hair, our nails, or
Speaker 1: but dermist. Uh, So it seems conceivable that this, or
Speaker 1: perhaps hexafluoro silsilic acid might play into a silicone based
Speaker 1: xenomorphs anatomy. Huh. And this is the exact sort of
Speaker 1: biochemistry that could enable a life form to thrive in
Speaker 1: a sulfuric acid rich environment. Now, I'm not sure it
Speaker 1: could be as potent as what we see in the films,
Speaker 1: but this is an area where I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there any biochemist listening off to weigh in on that
Speaker 1: for us? Yeah, well, I mean, how how reactive would
Speaker 1: an acid or whatever the chemical is. Maybe it's a
Speaker 1: strong base actually that it's releasing. How strong would it
Speaker 1: have to be to really eat through the hule that fast?
Speaker 1: Is there any chemical that would really eat through the
Speaker 1: whole that fast? I don't know about that. Maybe what
Speaker 1: if it has the fluoro antimonic acid in it? And
Speaker 1: you know, the thing is for a defense, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're thinking about something that has evolved,
Speaker 1: this as a basic defense against human oid creatures that
Speaker 1: are there at least semi human like, all you would need.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't need a very strong acid or base at
Speaker 1: all to just like get in their eyes and give
Speaker 1: you a moment's advantage in some sort of an altercation.
Speaker 1: But it seems as if it's an organism perfectly conceived
Speaker 1: to be unkillable on a spaceship for plot purposes. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it is a perfect organism. Now, some experts, including the
Speaker 1: late great Carl Saken, have speculated that alternate astrobiologies could
Speaker 1: still entail carbon but depend on something other than water.
Speaker 1: Is the solvent such as ammonia or perhaps hydrofluoric acid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course this is crazy because we we mentioned
Speaker 1: the face hugger burning through the presumably glass helmet, and
Speaker 1: uh and what does hydroflulic acid do? But it can
Speaker 1: break down glass, as we mentioned. Yeah, of course, now
Speaker 1: it does take a while. Again, one of the things
Speaker 1: that's always not quite matching up right between the movie
Speaker 1: acid and the acid in the in the real experiments
Speaker 1: we're talking about is just rapidity. It's just the time
Speaker 1: it takes to dissolve things, right, everything instant in the films,
Speaker 1: and it just it doesn't seem to be that way
Speaker 1: with real chemistry. So here's a quote from Sagan in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties Cosmos, his book. Perhaps elsewhere some solvent other
Speaker 1: than water is used, hydrofluoric acid might serve rather well,
Speaker 1: Although there is not a great deal of fluorine in
Speaker 1: the Cosmos hydrofluoric acid would do a great deal of
Speaker 1: damage to the kind of molecules that make us up.
Speaker 1: But other organic molecules paraffin waxes, for example, are perfectly
Speaker 1: stable in its presence. I like your Carl Sagan voice.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's not that great of a voice. We
Speaker 1: really know what we need is we need Chuck to
Speaker 1: come in and do his kermit the frog voice, which
Speaker 1: I think also sounds very sagany. I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever heard that. Oh you should, you should ask him
Speaker 1: to do a little kermit, but read some cosmos. I
Speaker 1: think your Carl Sagan is pretty good man. Don't don't
Speaker 1: put yourself down, all right. Well, you know, well Sagan
Speaker 1: is not the only one to chime in on this. Uh.
Speaker 1: Plenty of other biochemists have also looked at, you know,
Speaker 1: possible alternate biochemistries, and they've presented sulfuric acid as a possibility.
Speaker 1: So it's certainly more cosmically common, you know, So it
Speaker 1: would it would make sense. In the two thousand seven
Speaker 1: book The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems, and
Speaker 1: this is a book by a number of authors. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's credited authors are the Committee on the Limits
Speaker 1: of Organic Life and Planetary Systems UM, the National Research Council,
Speaker 1: and a few other bodies. I'm not going to list
Speaker 1: them all, but in a chapter titled Hawai Water Toward
Speaker 1: More Exotic Habitats, they state the following quote, Sulfuric acid
Speaker 1: is a reasonably good solvent that supports chemical reactivity. Sulfuric
Speaker 1: acid is known to exist above Venus, where three cloud
Speaker 1: layers at kilometers are composed mostly of aerosols of sulfuric acid,
Speaker 1: about eight in the upper layer and the nine percent
Speaker 1: in the lower layer. The temperature about three kelvin at
Speaker 1: about fifty kilometers altitude at about one point five a
Speaker 1: t m is consistent with stable carbon to carbon covalent bonds.
Speaker 1: So the take home here is that, yes, it is
Speaker 1: conceivable that we would have a a a carbon based
Speaker 1: life form in which the solvent is sulphuric acid. It's
Speaker 1: reasonable now whether that life could actually match up to
Speaker 1: the just profound the standards that we set with the
Speaker 1: xenomorph that's another issue. Yeah, are you are you breaking
Speaker 1: my heart? Robert? Are you telling me that there's probably
Speaker 1: not a xenomorph anywhere in our Solar system. I'm saying
Speaker 1: that the xenomorph exists in the realm of forms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and but the universe that we live in, it's it
Speaker 1: may be at least willing to meet us halfway. Well,
Speaker 1: even a pale imitation of a xenomorph would be welcome
Speaker 1: to my ears. Yes, so my eyes as it burned
Speaker 1: them out. So if you yeah, if you lived to
Speaker 1: be um you know, several thousand years old, your your
Speaker 1: life prolonged by all the areas technology is available to you,
Speaker 1: and you set yourself on the perfect death. You want
Speaker 1: to die the the the acidic blood of of of
Speaker 1: an alien species. There is maybe some hope. So Robert,
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed exploring this with you because I've always loved
Speaker 1: movie Acid, and I wonder what it is that captivates
Speaker 1: us so much about acid. I want to go back
Speaker 1: to that question. I started with, why you know they
Speaker 1: so they put Batman in the bank vault. Oh no,
Speaker 1: it's boiling acid. It could have been boiling water or
Speaker 1: even room temperature water, and it still would have killed him,
Speaker 1: but that wouldn't be nearly as interesting. For some reason,
Speaker 1: we want acid. Why is acid so interesting as a
Speaker 1: way to kill people when you could get the same
Speaker 1: thing done with just a hot uh normal liquid. You know,
Speaker 1: it could be hot uh bleach. I mean, well yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be that would be a pretty weird, interesting
Speaker 1: way to kill people. But hot water, boiling water that
Speaker 1: people would be like, huh, why why didn't you go
Speaker 1: to acid? Well, because well, for one thing, boiling water
Speaker 1: is every day, right or not every day. It's like
Speaker 1: even like most people have some experience of putting the
Speaker 1: macaroni in the boiling water. Yeah, yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: that's right. I think heating. Heating is a method of
Speaker 1: changing the chemical nature of something that's very familiar to us.
Speaker 1: Whereas the chemical reactions that take place in the bond
Speaker 1: breaking that takes place when you've got an acid solution
Speaker 1: of water, that that's something that's less familiar to us.
Speaker 1: We don't understand what's going on there. And for that reason,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like magic. Yeah, it's to the the
Speaker 1: average viewer, like a bad guy. Dissolving an acid makes
Speaker 1: as much scientific sense as one ron silver touching on
Speaker 1: another ron silver in time cop and then becoming a
Speaker 1: big red goo of melt. But yeah, that's why they're
Speaker 1: both wonderful. That they capture the magic of nonsense exactly.
Speaker 1: They put it right into your face or on the face. Hey,
Speaker 1: so there you have it, Hollywood acid. Uh so again,
Speaker 1: you want to check out more episodes of the podcast,
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