12 ms·
'Red mercury': why does this strange myth persist?
- barking 7y agoI'd never heard of red mercury before reading this article. I don't think it's a widely known myth.
- bloak 7y agoI agree. However, I had heard of "red phosphorus", so the expression "red mercury" sounded vaguely plausible to me. I suppose that claiming that something is a "myth" is a bullshit excuse journalists use for writing about something that is completely untrue, which they are not normally supposed to do.
- benj111 7y agoWell there are middle Eastern mediaeval writers talking about it, middle eastern sheiks going to Egypt after it, and middle eastern terrorists trying to buy it, so it may not be well known in the west, but is obviously widely believed in certain circles.
- iamnotacrook 7y agoWell, the "middle eastern terrorists" obviously want it so they can have their 72 raisins...sorry, virgins - I guess if you believe in one crazy thing why not go all in.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoThen it may be a good thing that this hoax has been made more well-known like this - expose it for what it is before it becomes a more mainstream scam or dangerous medicine like e.g. the current anti-vax campaign / essential oils trend.
- satori99 7y agoIt has been a plot device in several video games and films over the last few decades. There was an eponymous (and quite bad) movie made in 2005. Also Robert Ludlum used it in his novel The Prometheus Deception So, it is not really that obscure either. edit: I just found a New Scientist article from 1995 which seems to take the idea somewhat seriously. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14619750-300-cherry-red-and-very-dangerous/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14619750-300-cherry-r...
- LoSboccacc 7y agowe used to widely use a red disinfectant that contains mercury around here in the nineties, so this being called a myth with all the weird mysticism behind had me even more confused https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merbromin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merbromin
- mpettitt 7y agoIt's a McGuffin from the film RED 2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_2_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_2_(film)), among others, too.
- azernik 7y agoAll reporting I've seen indicates regional popularity of the myth - in Africa and the Middle East, specifically.
- benj111 7y agoSo why do the sellers not sell 'red' Mercury sulfide? They aren't misselling something then. Perhaps it says something about the buyers? Perhaps they want to be misled? Or have such low faith in science that something accepted by science becomes less legitimate in their eyes? It appears to me that it's coming from the same place as conspiracy theorists, which I suppose is what this basically is.
- hansjorg 7y agoBecause then they would be liable for mercury poisoning?
- robinduckett 7y agoI don't think con artists really care?
- benj111 7y agoOnly if you sell it for human consumption. "Red Mercury: As used by the Ancient Egyptians to embalm their Kings" Would probably get you the right demographic. You do raise a good moral point though. Selling someone some red food colouring is 'just' fraud, selling someone a toxic substance that kills them may be further than the average fraudster is willing to go.
- jacobush 7y agoI read somewhere about the US trying to leak fake intelligence that they worked on some kind of military propulsion device. And leave just enough clues that if someone tried this "at home", i.e. the Soviet Union, they would blow themselves up. And this was nicknamed or alluded to be "Red Mercury". Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Glocke_(hoax) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Glocke_(hoax) which maybe was where the inspiration for the story (true or false) came from.
- ovi256 7y agoA Tall Tail by Charlie Stross. https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-tail/ https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-tail/ A great short story.
- chewxy 7y agoI heard red mercury is so powerful that one drop of it is able to send a Vulcan science officer back in time to create an alternate universe
- bostonpete 7y agoWhat about an ambassador?
- dr_dshiv 7y agoThe first emperor of China died from mercury poisoning, in his search for eternal life. Red mercury (cinnabar) was used for writing on oracle bones. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnabar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnabar
- C1sc0cat 7y agoAnd to this day you can measure in creased mercury levels out side his tomb - there where rivers of mercury in side it according the legend
- dr_dshiv 7y agoAnd, since the tomb itself has never been excavated -- the mercury rivers may still be down there! https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/flowing-rivers-of-mercury/8122.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/flowing-rivers-of-me...
- Ma8ee 7y agoAren't those most likely dried out by now? Mmercury evaporates, although much slower than water.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoWouldn't want to be the guy to open the door to the tomb full of mercury air.
- dr_dshiv 7y agoThe volatility of mercury at a temperature of 20°C is 0.056 mg/h.cm². Would 10 million grams last 19,272,000 hours... We'd have to estimate the surface area... And then account for condensation in an enclosed area...
- fxj 7y agoI first heard about red mercury in the novel "A Tall Tail" by Charles Stross. https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-tail/ https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-tail/
- denton-scratch 7y agoWhat an awful article. You have to get to nearly the end before the author admits that cinnabar, a long-known and common mercury ore, is an intense red colour. Otherwise the article is all woo and hype.
- cartoonfoxes 7y agoWhile this one is urban legend, it's an interesting thought that there exist real and similarly code-named or pseudonymous highly secret chemicals, mechanisms and components which go into things like nuclear weapons. See: FOGBANK. "The material is classified. Its composition is classified. Its use in the weapon is classified, and the process itself is classified."
- steve19 7y agoMaybe they too are fake/non-existant, a kind of honey pot to catch external spy agencies or a way to distract them.
- cartoonfoxes 7y agoIt's thought to be an aerogel that serves as an interstage material for suspending and transfering energy between the primary and secondary within a nuclear warhead. Apparently they forgot how to make it, and had to reverse-engineer the original process. It's a neat story. See page 20 in https://www.lanl.gov/science/weapons_journal/wj_pubs/17nwj2_09.pdf https://www.lanl.gov/science/weapons_journal/wj_pubs/17nwj2_...
- arethuza 7y agoI seem to recall (from Dark Sun) that Ivy Mike used expanded polystyrene to fill/line the outer case of the weapon - it does seem that an aerogel would be a possible evolution of that.
- duskwuff 7y agoIf true, this would be an interesting case of a revealing code name -- "fog bank" is an apt description of the consistency of an aerogel.
- FOGBANK 7y agoProbably because it demanded low priority secrecy, since it isn't particularly dangerous, in and of itself. Aerogels, having been invented in 1931, weren't directly secret, given that they appeared in scientific publications. Meanwhile, it seems that the existing physics package designs had been optimized for a specific type of aerogel, and that the level of precision to maximize yield accounted for impurities introduced by the specific technique that had produced previous batches. The nature of the secret seems to have been a gremlin, both incidental and intrinsic to the design of the contraption. And yet not aerogel specifically.
- quickthrower2 7y agoI'm sticking with my snake oil.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sshagent 7y agoI dont know why my mind thinks Mercury is red in colour. I know its not the case but for some reason, my brain's first thought is its red in colour. Maybe I've ingested some of this urban myth as a child or something.
- quietbritishjim 7y agoPerhaps because mercury used to be used in thermometers, and the liquid now used in its place is often coloured red (and still often referred to as "mercury").
- tempguy9999 7y agoProbably total coincidence. But happens when I was a kid I 'knew' thermometers contained mercury, and it was clearly red. You only had to look.
- kmm 7y agoMaybe because of cinnabar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnabar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnabar
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- eesmith 7y agoMy guess is because of a red disinfectant called merbromin which contains mercury, as LoSboccacc pointed out elsewhere in these comments. When I was a kid, merbromin - under the trade name Mercurochrome - was a popular treatment for minor cuts. It contains mercury, and "stains the skin a distinctive carmine red" (quoting Wikipedia), which can last for many days.
- harimau777 7y agoI think they gloss over cinnabar too quickly. I don't have proof, but it seems logical that it is the source of these myths. That seems especially likely since the center of a person's Qi in traditional Chinese medicine is often called the "Cinnabar Field" and cinnabar was used in Taoist alchemy that often sought immortality.
- the_seraphim 7y agoIt probably is, but the BBC being the BBC they won't risk linking a known harmful agent (cinnabar is mercury afterall) to traditional medicine, lest someone go powder some cinnabar, suspend it in mineral oil and sell it as a cure-all
- jimhefferon 7y agoNo better way to make some people think it exists than by fervently denying it.
- Izkata 7y agoAt first I thought this had something to do with the planet Mercury, but reading the content it reminded me of one fictional object. In the anime Fullmetal Alchemist, one form the philosopher's stone takes is a red liquid: https://bigmemes.funnyjunk.com/comments/Looks+like+a+philosophers+stone+_03c4b29025d07f373b3cbbfd0524acd0.jpg https://bigmemes.funnyjunk.com/comments/Looks+like+a+philoso...
- roseway4 7y ago“Red Mercury” was also implicated in the downing of South African Airways Flight 295 in 1987, with the loss of 159 passengers. The plane was rumored to be freighting the substance from Taiwan to Johannesburg for use in the Apartheid regime’s nuclear weapons program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Airways_Flight_295 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Airways_Flight_2...
- kazinator 7y ago> The hunt for red mercury Play on 1990 movie title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_for_Red_October_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_for_Red_October_(film...