Comments on "Frozen Smoke"

Dude, that bong hit gave me brainfreeze.

Best news from the article...

the first manned mission to Mars, scheduled for 2018

When will people stop referring to science as a miracle? There's no deus ex machina here.

Aerogel is pretty fucking neat. I hope it becomes cheap so I can just have some to keep around the house.

Aerogel is essentially glass foam. It's got amazing thermal and accoustic insulative properties. I've got a square of it sitting at my desk- hard to see under certain lights- quite like "liquid smoke".

But it's not the seventh wonder of the world. That would be astroglide. Which can take you a lot better places than merely to Mars.

Can someone smear this stuff on Erica's keyboard?

I hop onto slog and see 95!?! responses to some sophmoric whine about not getting her way with a metro driver. Pathetic town, pathetic concerns. Couldn't she have just used the awful tortuous 1/2 hour, oh the pain, to read a book or something? How this bitch is allowed to stay here is beyond me. Can't wait for the next puke she throws up for us.

BTW, I'm no techie, but Aerogel looks cool. Thanks for the link.

The more broadly it becomes used the more likely we find out it kills baby eagles and causes alzheimers in 30 year olds. Science is rad, but must be cautious as well. I agree with the guy who is thrilled about mens on mars in 2018. It's a shame we're in the minority... people have no sense of wonder for anything they can't hold in their hands. Part of the reason no one cares about awesome species going extinct by the thousands every year.
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Dr. Brownlee at UW used the stuff as part of his research into what comets are made of (the Stardust program). Apparently he broke one in his office and had a terrible time finding the pieces.

Can it stop us from invading countries that have zilch to do with 9-11?

Oh, darn.

Never mind.

Yes but what I want to know is, does it provide us with new and creative ways of killing people?

Jude- almost certainly. Human beings are chemical processes. Anything with highly abnormal chemical qualities introduced in the right part of a human in the right amount could kill in the most unusual ways, one could surmise. Any takers? How would you use frozen smoke to kill a guy, like an Agatha Christie mystery or episode of House?

We recently watched one of those hour-long Brit-mystery dramas on saturday night PBS, so I'm gonna take you up on this teaser #11.

hmmmm, give me 30 minutes or so, I'll think it over while gathering blackberries in the alley.

Aerogel has been around since the mid-90s I think. It's a mystery to me why it's taken so long to get attention, because it has seemingly endless applications. I think it can only be manufactured in zero g?

A couple of scenarios come to mind:

Hydrophilic Aerogel is a terrific dessicant, so it would be theoretically possible to encase a person in a sufficient quantity to draw away nearly 100% of the body's liquid, leaving little more than a sere, withered "mummy".

Aerogel is also a highly effective sound insulator, so presumably someone could construct a room in which almost no sound could escape, thereby providing a perfect location for doing in a victim. Because of it's weight-to-density ratio, the room could easily be disassembled, thus effectively making the "scene of the crime" disappear.

Ok, the more I thought about it, I was coming up with more examples of inspiration from whodunnits than howdunnits.

I found my story, though, by way of Woody Allen's last one, 'Scoop' -yes, feel free to chastize me for name-dropping Allen. I do not support 'incest' related pedophilia-esque behavior at all. Not so much relying on Allen's story, but on key scenes that happen in a special room for rare musical instruments, I've fallen back on my tired oeuvre- music (the room in the movie however, does bear a resemblance to Comte's 2nd scenario).

So there's this concert, packed. The performer is a singer/songwriter, kind of an anti-star figure, confrontational brooding, invites insults - the raging pop tops of the indie-major scene, just about reaching his peak, and predicted by marketing experts to be last year's news very soon. Near the end of the show(arranged by his agent- hint*hint), he shoots frozen smoke from a specially designed firehose for containing the volatile substance. It covers the entire audience. The agent had told him the 'smoke' was perfectly safe, a new NASA development that only seemed solid but was actually very light and only shocking for a brief second. The crowd grows hot, hotter, Hugo Boss hot, until they start mauling for the exit. Fires ignite, people are trampled, the performer is trying to remain cool, and thusly starts to head backstage. Parts of the crowd see him and head for safety that way. In the process, the singer gets knocked upside a spare mic stand, unconsciously falling to the ground for the growing throngs to rattle over him too grossly like a dead and battered fish.

Meanwhile, the agent (lawyer) is already crossing the border into Mexico. Strangely enough, it was in Mexico City where the agent first discovered the singer doing impromtu 'performances' at a youth hostel. Later in the wee hours, as the scum sucks an unlit cigar and speeds toward a tequila sunrise, he notes a young hitchhiker on the side of the road. She is perhaps 12 yrs old, and upon stopping the car and unwinding the window, beautiful folk songs are heard being played on a homemade looking flute. He listens until she finishes, meets her eye-to-eye, and says in the familiar innocent voice that has been honed over the years, "Have you ever wanted to be in a movie?"

Ta Da

You don't have to make it in free-fall, but you do have to use supercritical carbon dioxide to make it (slowly!). Thirty atmospheres of pressure is pretty awkward.

I want to know if it's light and strong enough that you could paint rubber on the surface of a cube of it, pump out the air, and get a lighter-than-air object without using helium or hydrogen...

Thanks, Garrett! I was kind of hoping a science-minded nerd would come up with some obscene way to use the chemical properties of the stuff to do a guy in, but your storytelling is delightful. The desiccant mummy idea is cool. What would happen if you delivered a thin rod of the stuff into someone's abdomen with a skewer? What if you did that several times? That can't feel good...
And Anne- I likey the idea! I find myself severely doubting it would work, but are there any nerds more educated than myself who have a theory about the feasibility that use?

Savage, and the rest of the "Stranger" sycophants.

Listen and read loud and clear.

Your paper sucks moose cock!

Moose cock, I tell you!

Oh, you're so witty and gay with those artsy feminist types at A-HA Theatre, and you're moved to tears by the latest one man show at ON the boards, but the truth is, writers like Claire Montgomery made you look up to THE BEVERLY BLAZE in qualilty.

And let's not forget Sabage sucking up to John Carlson about invading Irag in 2003.

HE ACTUALLY SUPPORTED THAT!!!

What a phoney, a fake, and a charlatan hanging out in a bubble that couldn't be further from the real world.

THE STRANGER sucks, and so do you!!!

Big Frank, if the Stranger is so full of syncophants and rejects, why are you wasting your time on it? Go away.

@ 8: if this stuff is supposed to withstand a direct blast from 1kg of dynamite, how did this professor break a piece in his office?

If it's glass, couldn't you grind it up and feed it to someone, making them bleed to death internally?

On making an aerogel balloon: yes, you could do it. At a crush strength of 26psi, it would have a sufficient safety factor if the balloon was round (no stress concentrators). It weighs 1mg/cc vs. 1.2mg/cc for air. So for a 1000kg payload you would need (ignoring the wt of the rubber) 4950m3 or a sphere 21m (~60ft) across. Not to bad. HOWEVER- at current prices ($5500/ft3), the balloon would cost you $961m dollars.

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