this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
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Science Memes

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top 42 comments
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (4 children)

Do you know what happens to hydrogen when the temp drops below 14K?

Yeah. Metal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 minutes ago

Doesn't it also need to be under immense pressure? I don't think low temperature alone is enough.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

That's hard af

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Metallic hydrogen may also make up parts of Jupiter's core.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 minutes ago

That's fucking badass

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Plutonium is not a real element.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 hours ago

It's a dwarf element.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (2 children)

I'm confused, that's just a normal periodic table.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 hours ago

Found the astronomer.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

what? no, a normal periodic table has oxygen and carbon too!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 hours ago

i mean, i think most chemists are organic

few are free range though

[–] [email protected] 76 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

*The Periodic Table according to Michael Jackson

[–] [email protected] 48 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

Does that decay into ShNoMe?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 31 minutes ago

I believe you're thinking of SHeMoNa

[–] [email protected] 9 points 19 hours ago

Yup. Faster with a catalyst. Ma2Se, Ma2Sa are good examples.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Iodine is a transition metal I will die on this hill.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Care to defend your position? Iodine is certainly not in the d-block...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

The intended joke is that hypervalent iodine compounds like Dess-Martin periodinane flip between different oxidation states like you often see for transition metals. As an example, the mechanism usually drawn for oxidations by DMP is similar to those drawn for, e.g., PCC/Jones reagent, where the electrons removed from the substrate is "banked" at the metal center. Obviously, redox chemistry is not at all limited to transition metals, but I am often surprised at iodine's propensity to engage in it. A lot of research over the past decade or two has also developed redox catalysis with these reagents, reactivity which is commonly (though again not always) the purview of transition metals.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

Ah yes, oxygen, my favourite metal

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 hours ago

It sticks to a magnet, that means metal right?

[–] [email protected] 58 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Can't make fire without oxygen. That's pretty metal 🤟

[–] [email protected] 27 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Can’t make fire without oxygen

Fluorine fires have entered the chat.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Fluorine fires have entered the chat.

Oh shit, someone call the fluorine fire department to save the chat!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

call the fluorine fire department

Sometimes there is no such department, especially for the most vigorous fluorinating reagents like chlorine trifluoride: Sand Won't Save You This Time (Derek Lowe)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 hours ago

it can potentially go on to “burn” things that you would normally consider already burnt to hell and gone, and a practical consequence of that is that it’ll start roaring reactions with things like bricks and asbestos tile.

Yeah, that's a big fat nope from me 😬

[–] [email protected] 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Lmao I think that particular emoji is sign language for love, not that that isn't appropriate here

[–] [email protected] 4 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Even apart from sign language, it's the hand sign for "hang loose" and not "throwing horns." But was as close as I could get.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 minutes ago

Pretty sure that's the emoji for "thwip".

[–] [email protected] 16 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

You think that's air you're breathing now?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 20 hours ago

Matrix missed a great chance at an awesome unrealistic underwater flight scene.

[–] Tja 15 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

What about metallic hydrogen in the core of planets?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 hours ago

Funnily enough, probably not a metal according to astronomers.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

"Wait, they're ALL metals?"
"Always have been."

[–] [email protected] 23 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

Physicists are notorious for approximating, and astronomers are even worse. But there are some subfields where they care about being more precise, and you maybe break the periodic table into a handful of elements plus alphas. And there's that one or two people getting exquisite spectral resolution and signal-to-noise on a few stars and measuring the abundance of Technetium or whatever.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 18 hours ago

It's why I fucking love astrophysics. There's so much handwaving because so much information is observed.

But without the handwaving you can't find crazy ass things like nuclear fusion being behind the power of stars. You find these really big numbers everywhere that make the "normal stuff" negligible.

It not that the precision isn't important, it's just not always relevant at particular scales, like the scale of space.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 18 hours ago

yOu aRe MadE oF sTardUst

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago

That's because these two account for something like 99% of all normal matter in the universe

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago