[HN Gopher] These are real compounds
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These are real compounds
Author : _Microft
Score : 114 points
Date : 2022-03-23 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| moron4hire wrote:
| Always love a good Derek Lowe article. His article "Things I
| Won't Work With: Dioxygen Diflouride" is terrifying and hilarious
| at the same time. https://www.science.org/content/blog-
| post/things-i-won-t-wor...
| malux85 wrote:
| That was excellent, it just kept building!
| thehappypm wrote:
| His face is one I started noticing! He seems to have written
| tons of articles I really enjoyed
| moron4hire wrote:
| It's not my space, so I don't often read his articles or
| necessarily recognize his name when it comes up. For me it's
| the writing style and fear of flourine that I end up
| recognizing.
| mech422 wrote:
| I love that column :-) 'foof' is more then a cpu bug :-P
| _Microft wrote:
| I knew that cyclobutane existed (a ring of four carbon atoms with
| attached hydrogen atoms which is 'weird' in the sense that the
| angles between the bonds are not what would be expected for a
| carbon atom with four bonds [0]) but learned about the existence
| of ladderanes today. Their structure looks just soo unusual.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladderane
|
| Speaking of unusual structures, here is something like a 2D
| version of a ladderane:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenestrane
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_hybridisation#sp3
| divbzero wrote:
| I glanced at the structures first before reading the text and
| assumed they were oddballs synthesized in the lab. It's
| incredible that these are all natural products. Leptocillin
| also looks astonishingly weird.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| It's interesting that one group of compounds is named using the
| Latin, in this case for "window" (fenestrane), but "ladderane"
| makes use of an ordinary English word (by way of Old English
| and Germanic).
|
| I guess I would have expected a Latin-derived name like
| "escalane" instead.
| _Microft wrote:
| Follow the first link/s in these articles and somewhere you
| will find ,,jawsamycin". A part of this molecule looks a lot
| like a row of teeth...
| Someone wrote:
| _Shark_ teeth (https://mobile.twitter.com/germhuntermd/stat
| us/1285971314134...)
| kccqzy wrote:
| And the last example from the article, a tetrasubstituted
| cyclobutane, probably tells you that the functional groups
| connected to the cyclobutane could alleviate some of the ring
| strain in plain cyclobutane.
|
| Similarly, cyclopropane also has incredible ring strain and
| likely won't be found in nature, but plenty of derivatives can.
| echelon wrote:
| I'm ever conflicted with the opposing forces of climate change
| and meeting the energy needs of our growing and innovative
| civilization.
|
| Evolution has produced a bountiful assortment of living,
| breathing solutions that fit into every nook and cranny of our
| biological state space. Millions of years of adaptation have
| produced sometimes incredibly niche systems that beautifully
| capture all of the energy available to them. The biochemical
| pathways nature discovers are fascinating and complex and of an
| altogether different nature than what our human innovation
| capital can find or produce.
|
| So it's incredibly depressing that we're losing all of this
| amazing biodiversity. A moss or fungus might have more
| information in its genes - biochemical pathways, metabolic flux,
| finely tuned balance, encodings of adaptations beyond our
| understanding, etc. etc. - than the sum total of all human
| thought thus far. And that's not even considering the non-
| molecular, ecosystem and even biogeochemical impact these losses
| can have.
|
| But if we stop building and consuming and making, the plates come
| crashing down. Our sun burns out. The universe will never know of
| us.
|
| It's all so complicated. I'm glad we can appreciate these little
| wonders, though.
|
| Thank you for posting this article. Chemistry is beautiful.
| Maursault wrote:
| > Chemistry is beautiful.
|
| It is, but as a species, we have been astoundingly
| irresponsible with it and continue to be, for profit.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| > The universe will never know of us.
|
| If there is anything out there with the capacity to "know",
| perhaps one day they'll find our ruins and compose some art
| along the lines of Shelley's poem Ozymandias. As I've been
| enjoyed the sci-fi of Adrian Tchaikovsky of late[0], I hope
| that it's sentient octupuses who can express the tragedy and
| mystery of our downfall in a dance of colour and movement.
|
| [0]: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/we-are-going-on-an-
| adven...
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "Pipline" -> "Pipeline"
| rossdavidh wrote:
| An odd thing to downvote...
| _Microft wrote:
| Thanks, fixed!
| zamalek wrote:
| "Extractions and Ire" on YouTube has been having a go at
| synthesizing a cubane, while the creator does "meme" a lot, it is
| good chemistry. And a really weird molecule.
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