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My organolithium environment planet needs to be chemically stabilized

But I don't know which compounds could physically evolve on a planet to form an atmosphere and seas wherein humans would spontaneously detonate.

The working title for the story is The Amazing Bob Burns. The basic parameters needed for the story to work are:

  • It is a planet formed by natural (or theorized) forces
  • It has a liquid layer (seas) and a gas layer (atmosphere)
  • The seas and atmosphere can co-exist with the correct pressure/temperature/climate combination, which is not artificial
  • People blow up
  • Would be nice to have abundant trifluorogold and Gold pentafluoride salts in the land (or at least accessible to the upper crust)

This isn't asking for but I want to build it with the absolute lowest dosage of hand-wavium I can get away with. So, you're welcome to put just a little $\ ^{42.3} _{97.6} \text{Fu}^\pm $ Fudgium into the mix. Otherwise, shoot for a solution.

By blow up, I mean at a minimum, they burst into violent flames such as would happen in a bath of chlorine trifluoride.

Vogon Poet
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    Can you be more specific about what you will or won't allow. As soon as you allow handwaving you vastly expand the scope of valid answers from just "Is there a breathable atmosphere that could cause a human to spontaneously detonate?" to the far more open ended, and imprecise "How can I handwave spontaneous human detonation on my planet?" Remember that saying "magic did it" and "On this planet people detonate" are both handwaving the why away. – sphennings Mar 02 '22 at 18:20
  • Would earth with a really really high atmospheric oxygen content count? It may not have people detonate, but they'd catch fire very very easily. – sdfgeoff Mar 02 '22 at 18:23
  • Note that detonation is different from just bursting in flames. For detonation, explosive substance must somehow get inside the body. – Alexander Mar 02 '22 at 18:28
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    Do things that aren't humans blow up? Obviously I would expect that other animals would also blow up, but what about things like plant fibers? Plastics? Random organic molecules like sugars? – Cadence Mar 02 '22 at 18:59
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    Yes pretty much anything with water or organic material is reduced violently – Vogon Poet Mar 02 '22 at 19:33
  • @sphennings Isn’t it implied without a hard-science tag that hand-waving is going to happen? I don’t think I said anything that isn’t common knowledge – Vogon Poet Mar 02 '22 at 19:34
  • @sdfgeoff I didn’t think of that. I prefer spontaneous however. – Vogon Poet Mar 02 '22 at 19:37
  • @Alexander I have a definition of “blow up” for this reason, thanks – Vogon Poet Mar 02 '22 at 19:37
  • If anything containing water violently bursts into flame, what are the seas made of? There aren't many substitutes at STP that aren't themselves organic. – Cadence Mar 02 '22 at 19:54
  • They're all fat alcoholics wearing flannel because it's winter so there's a lot of static electricity. Spontaneous human combustion – Mazura Mar 03 '22 at 06:58
  • Your Fudgium has a lot handwavium associated with it. The 97 represents the element number - the number of protons in its nucleus. 97 just happens to be Berkelium. The 42.3 represents the atomic mass number. It is never less than the element number. Except for hydrogen, the atomic mass number is always greater than the element number because of the neutrons each atomic nucleus contains. For hydrogen, the numbers are the same. The atomic mass number = the number of protons + the number of neutrons. –  Mar 03 '22 at 09:27
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    @Fred Fixed. Remember, you have to subtract the antineutrons and add the fraction-quarks to properly notate a fudgium atom. – Vogon Poet Mar 03 '22 at 16:41

4 Answers4

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At temperatures and solvent environments in which organolithium compounds will be stable, there are no gaseous compounds that have sufficient reducing power to make humans catch fire. Earthling biomolecules are already pretty reduced, which is why we get so much more energy out of oxidation reactions than hydrogenation reactions.

Lithium is, conveniently, the strongest elemental reducing agent (with sodium and magnesium in 2nd and 3rd places, and everything else far behind). It will react with liquid ammonia (which is really your only reasonable solvent for stable organolithium biomolecules; ethers are used in chemical synthesis, but organolithium-ether halflives are short on biological timescales, and how would you get an ocean of even dimethylether?) to form lithium amide... but if there is a large excess of lithium on your world, the seas might very well be full of lithium amide salt, which will still react violently and exothermically with water to produce lithium hydroxide and ammonia. So, you could probably handwave humans exploding on contact with ocean spray, and they'd certainly meet a violent and explosive death if they jumped into the sea. Freshammonia rain, rivers, and lakes would be freezing and caustic, and so still quite deadly, but not explosion-causing.

Gold fluorides would also react with ammonia or lithium. That doesn't mean you can't have them--geological fractionation can produce all kinds of weird stuff--but they would be very short lived on the surface. If there is a large quantity of gold fluorides in the crust, there's almost certainly a much larger quantity of lithium fluoride, as fluorine (the strongest elemental oxidizer) really, really likes to pair up with lithium (the strongest elemental reducer), which would probably be the primary salt in your oceans.

Vogon Poet
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Logan R. Kearsley
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6

Hidden antimatter in spicy sea salt

Believe me or not, some normal matter crystals can enclose and fixate antimatter particles in their lattice. When the crystal is damaged, the particle will escape and annihilate. It's not uncommon: it helps dragons ignite their fire as well.

Your people fancy spicy food, on your planet spicyness is not caused by capsaicin, it is certain minerals, that come in sea salt. The crystals are not dissolving while the food is prepared. It requires stomach acids or blood, to break it down.

When you eat it, microscopic sparks will cause the spicyness. When you eat too much of it, there will be more than just a few particles, it can perforate the stomach, or even worse. Too much really hurts, excessive amounts result in a deadly explosion.

The effect depends on local concentration, crystal grain size and coincidence.. There's a cube millimeter of salt in your food somewhere, you could end up in a big splash.

The men on your planet still eat food with sea salt, nevertheless. There is a culture around this food, connecting it to male courage and fertility.

Goodies
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  • I'm finding a few references to positrons trapped in liquid crystals at extremely low temperatures, but not much else on antimatter in crystals. Can you drop a link and more info into your answer? – Vogon Poet Mar 03 '22 at 16:55
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It is hot.

https://earthsky.org/space/k2-141b-lava-planet-with-magma-ocean-rocky-rain-supersonic-winds-super-earth/

Discovered in 2018, K2-141b is only about 1 1/2 times the radius of Earth, but is a very alien world. Its surface, atmosphere and ocean are all composed of rock, specifically sodium, silicon monoxide, and silicon dioxide...

So how does this affect the planet’s climate? Being tidally locked this way means that there are drastic temperature differences between the day and night sides of K2-141b. On the side facing away from the star, it is bitterly cold, estimated to be below -330 degrees Fahrenheit (-200 degrees Celsius). But on the star-facing side, the temperature is estimated to be a scorching 5,700 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius). In our own solar system, we think of Venus’ scorching surface temperature as being hot enough to melt rocks. But on K2-141b, it is so hot that rocks can evaporate. The vaporized rock helps to create a thin atmosphere on the planet.

It is a planet formed by natural (or theorized) forces - check

It has a liquid layer (seas) and a gas layer (atmosphere) - check.

The seas and atmosphere can co-exist with the correct pressure/temperature/climate combination, which is not artificial - check

People blow up - the outer layer (of the person) would first outgas water and fats. Remaining denatured proteins would harden and begin turning to charcoal (carbon), forming a hard outer layer. When the water trapped inside boiled, it would explode through the hardened outer layer. This is not so much catching on fire and burning vigorously as you propose, but more popping. It might not be one big pop but several smaller pops. I thought for sure youtube would have something but 5000F environments are hard to film.

Would be nice to have abundant trifluorogold and Gold pentafluoride salts in the land (or at least accessible to the upper crust) - this is very tricky. Gold is going to unload that fluoride on other elements that want it more; on this world that would probably be sodium.

Willk
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  • Well well well. Now if there were only some way to blow up on the dark side…. A rôtisserie? – Vogon Poet Mar 03 '22 at 03:46
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    "5000F environments are hard to film" -- citation needed. ;) – Tom Mar 03 '22 at 04:25
  • This answer needs to be cut and pasted into the "Can a habitable world rain glass?" question. My calculator says there has to be a "twilight zone" of 25° C somewhere on a tidally locked planet with -200° C and 3,000° C geographical variance, and that zone won't be in the blast of solar radiation. Could get windy, I suppose. – Vogon Poet Mar 03 '22 at 17:01
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Beans

Guess what! The Mythbusters have already tested it, and with a flame you can ignite your flatulence. Simply put, beans=booms. Our backend blasts contain both Hydrogen and Methane, which can explode. The stinkier the fart, the more explosion you get.

Mythbusters fart explosion.

The initial spark

Only problem is that we need some external spark to light it up into a butt bomb. This is by far the most difficult part, but I think I've got it. Spontaneous Combustion is a weird and unique phenomenon. Because I don't quite understand it, I'll just leave the Wikipedia article.

So bad timing, and a lot of cutting cheese, gets you the nice boom you're looking for. No handwaving needed.

Murphy L.
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  • Pretty sure spontaneous human combustion falls well into the realm of "pseudoscience". Almost every suspected case of it is more easily explained by someone just dropping a lit cigarette onto their clothes after suffering a heart-attack or something. There've been no actual witnesses, only people seeing the results after the fact. – Darrel Hoffman Mar 03 '22 at 15:55
  • @DarrelHoffman Yes, that is a good point. I remembered it from a Ripley's Believe It or Not book, and thought it would make a good idea for here. – Murphy L. Mar 03 '22 at 17:04
  • I wonder how a combination of this and the highly concentrated oxygen answer would work together? Methane in pure oxygen? The reaction releases an amazing 891 kJ/mol of energy. Autoignition in air is at 600C, what temperature does it need to be to have a fart spontaneously combust in pure O$_2$? – Vogon Poet Mar 03 '22 at 17:07
  • @VogonPoet Only one way to find out. Call Adam and Jamie, and get them to test in a bulletproof cage. (Or Google it. As it turns out, Methane autoignites at 610 C, and Hydrogen at 560. We'll take the lower because it igniting will ignite the other.) – Murphy L. Mar 03 '22 at 17:28
  • @MurphyL. I think that temp is for air - 20% oxygen. Is it the same in pure oxygen? – Vogon Poet Mar 03 '22 at 18:12
  • @VogonPoet I do not know. If we go with the spherical cow option of saying nothing else in air combustible, we get that it's probably around 300 C. (To be fair, I have minimal anything to base that number on.) – Murphy L. Mar 03 '22 at 18:16