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Tastes like Raspberries, Smells Like Rum

Physsica

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So apparently a gas cloud in our galaxy tastes likes raspberries and smells like rum. And is poisonous so don't go getting any ideas.

I realize this article is several years old, but I just now found it and thought... that is one of the coolest, but most useless things ever discovered. Can you think of any others?
 

King Neptune

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So apparently a gas cloud in our galaxy tastes likes raspberries and smells like rum. And is poisonous so don't go getting any ideas.

I realize this article is several years old, but I just now found it and thought... that is one of the coolest, but most useless things ever discovered. Can you think of any others?

I think this would be much cooler, if the cloud were composed of ethyl formate and ethanol. Then the big problem would be condensing enough so that one could drink it.
 
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zarada

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"It does happen to give raspberries their flavour, but there are many other molecules that are needed to make space raspberries," Arnaud Belloche, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, told the Guardian.

i too can think of certain molecules that can make space raspberries...:roll:

cool link, thanks for posting.
 

Physsica

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I think this would be much cooler, if the could were composed of ethyl formate and ethanol. Then the big problem would be condensing enough so that one could drink it.

That would be one expensive bottle of liquor!
 

Albedo

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Starships plowing thru the nebula.
At one end a giant ramscoop, at the other a spigot and a shot glass.

That sounds like a Muse lyric.
 

Albedo

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Or instead of a glass, just a mouthpiece. Try and beer-bong nebula alcohol at relativistic speeds, I dare you.

I'm an Aussie. I could do it.
 

Physsica

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Or instead of a glass, just a mouthpiece. Try and beer-bong nebula alcohol at relativistic speeds, I dare you.

I'm an Aussie. I could do it.

I believe it. Crazy Australians. ;)
 

Albedo

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I believe it. Crazy Australians. ;)

Honestly, how much brain damage can ethanol molecules travelling at 0.9998 c cause?

Hell, I worked it out. At 0.9998 c, one standard drink (10 g ethanol) contains circa 0.4 X 10^14 J kinetic energy, or about half the annual electricity output of Mongolia Greenland.

That's some wallop.
 
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Physsica

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Honestly, how much brain damage can ethanol molecules travelling at 0.9998 c cause?

Hell, I worked it out. At 0.9998 c, one standard drink (10 g ethanol) contains circa 0.4 X 10^14 J kinetic energy, or about half the annual electricity output of Mongolia Greenland.

That's some wallop.

Someone has waaaaayyy too much time on their hands. And so do I. That's enough energy (if I did my maths right) to put roughly 1 million kgs into a low earth orbit.
_________
ETA: I should be writing...
 
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jjdebenedictis

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Well, I go into orbit with enough raspberry-rum cordials in me. And then I am brung low.
 

King Neptune

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Great, now I'm seeing giant drunken space ants. :tongue

I'm going to have to think about his the next time I get an urge to write space opera. Either fending off the drunken ants, or someone harvesting the cloud and selling it as authentic "space booze", or something mores subtle. How much would you pay for a quart of authentic space booze?
 

Reziac

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I'm going to have to think about his the next time I get an urge to write space opera. Either fending off the drunken ants, or someone harvesting the cloud and selling it as authentic "space booze", or something mores subtle. How much would you pay for a quart of authentic space booze?

And is it only authentic if you find the ants in space? What if you ship them off-planet yourself? and will they grow bigger in space? does that make them produce more booze faster??
 

King Neptune

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And is it only authentic if you find the ants in space? What if you ship them off-planet yourself? and will they grow bigger in space? does that make them produce more booze faster??

Who knows what strangeness is out there? Truth truly is stranger than anything I dream up. Perhaps the ants eat the original gases and particles and excrete ethanol; if yeast can do that, then why no ants?

Ants to be used like the worms in Mescal.
 

King Neptune

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No great clouds of Balvenie or Laphroaig up there? I'd be dissapointed a bit.

What's the difference between raspberry brandy and Balvenie? Maybe one percent mixed impurities? We can age for a while in oak barrels and add some adulterants, and make enough profit to ship real Scotch into space.