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This Chemical Does Not Exist
- slenk 5y agoIs there a significance of this molecule?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- TheCapn 5y agoWell, it seems to be generated randomly; similar to the "this person does not exist" site(s) https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/
- slenk 5y agoI missed that it changed
- _Nat_ 5y agoGuessing that site's showing composite-images? Many of the images seem reasonable. They can have odd asymmetries that may give an unnatural vibe, though most don't seem to have majorly overt issues. Most of the more overt issues seem to be melding facial wear (like glasses and ear-rings) into skin. The most overt oddity was a woman with "stuff" splattered on her face.. I'd be curious how/why that'd be something that could be generated.. A lesser oddity was a man who had a mustache that appeared to be shaven on one half, but not the other.
- tiborsaas 5y agoIt's using generative adversarial networks create these images from a model. Well explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWoravHhsUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWoravHhsUU
- FeepingCreature 5y agoIt's not composite any more than human imagination is composite. It's based on existing images, but only in the sense that they formed a basis for learning how a human face generalizes.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago(It changes every time you refresh the page)
- slenk 5y agoAhh I missed that
- IBCNU 5y agoSomebody hook this up to a 3d bio printer thing... that'll go well right?
- parsecs 5y agoNot sure if the "3d bio printer thing" that you're thinking of can synthesize stuff at the molecular level though. Maybe it would be fun to have it print scale models of the chemicals with colored filament.
- ampdepolymerase 5y agoIf you can find an efficient, generic, and universal method for synthesizing molecules of arbitrary shape and complexity, then you would receive the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and possibly Physics and Medicine too. You would also likely receive the Turing award (if your method is algorithmic and not using ML blackboxes since the search space for biochemistry is absolutely immense) and there may be entire prizes named after you. Whoever can find such an algorithm will put Corey and Woodward out of a job and the entire field of organic chemistry will study your name and life in future.
- webmaven 5y ago> If you can find an efficient, generic, and universal method for synthesizing molecules of arbitrary shape and complexity, then you would receive the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and possibly Physics and Medicine too. I hate to burst your bubble, but that is almost certainly not literally true. Any device with those capabilities will be the end result of heck of a lot of engineering (much of it incremental), but whatever scientific discoveries are necessary will be so far removed that they will hardly seem relevant. Theoretically, the 2016 Nobel for chemistry might prove to be the relevant foundation for the necessary engineering, but time will tell. Anyway, discoveries like CRISPR, that can be immediately (relatively speaking) deployed as a revolutionary tool, are by far the exception. As an exercise, feel free to identify the Nobel prizes that were awarded for the invention of xerography (aka photocopying), digital laser printing, and thermoplastic 3D printing (or any other extant additive manufacturing method).
- jhbadger 5y agoThe thing with randomly generating molecules is unlike with faces or cats, there is the good chance that a real molecule is generated. Unless they screen the molecule against a database and exclude matches?
- happytoexplain 5y agoAre we sure that's the case? I have no idea what the combinatorics are like for molecules of this size. They seem small enough that it would occasionally generate molecules that have existed at some point, but that's based on some really fuzzy intuition.
- CrazyStat 5y agoI tried a few times, and on the second load of the page I got a single hydrogen atom, so I think it's safe to say they aren't excluding things. There was recently a link, I think on the front page here, to an article about how many chemical compounds there are [1]. Based on that link we're looking at probably trillions to quadrillions of potential structures with atomic weight under 300, which would cover the structures I saw in my few reloads of the page. Chemistry is wild. For an example close to home, taking table sugar (sucrose, a single type of molecule) and applying heat to caramelize it results in hundreds to thousands of different end products from at least half a dozen qualitatively different classes of chemical reactions. [1] https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/chemical-space-is-big-really-big/7899.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/chemical-space-is-big...
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoI understand why "This person does not exist" is interesting. Generating a fake person seemed hard until we could do it. But why is this interesting? Minus the animation, isn't this something any smart high-schooler could do with pen and paper?
- jyriand 5y agoI think the hard part is that you can't draw something that already exists
- skohan 5y agoIs it guaranteed not to exist? I would have assumed the interesting part is that these obey the laws of chemistry. But even then it seems like you could do something fairly simple algorithmically to achieve this.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoYeah, it seems like the only way to guarantee it doesn't exist (rather than that it simply hasn't been catalogued) would be to draw something impossible -- which seems less interesting than drawing something possible.
- libria 5y agoHeh, just found out there's one for numbers https://thisnumberdoesnotexist.com/ https://thisnumberdoesnotexist.com/
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoI just laughed for a full thirty seconds. What's most interesting about that is somebody actually bothered to put it together.
- tyingq 5y agoIt did reliably generate numbers that produced zero google search results. Maybe that's what they meant? Though it did also occasionally spit out a "number" with a letter in it, like "q29199.951301068788".
- slyrus 5y agoHmm... first molecule I got is in pubchem as cpd 5216868. I guess the space of possible molecules with under, say, 25 heavy atoms, while large, is much smaller than that of possible faces.
- trutannus 5y agoI noticed a pharmaceutical come up a little while back when I tried this out myself. Maybe a better name would be "This Chemical May Not Exist".
- lmilcin 5y agoI am not sure this site explores all possible molecules. Rather, it shuffles couple different real groups in different combinations.
- pmoriarty 5y agoI'd like to see a "This Chemical Is Not What You Think It Is" site, that explains what chemicals like the infamous dihydrogen monoxide really is.
- sedeki 5y agoSounds like a dangerous chemical. Luckily we have stuff with electrolytes.
- gotostatement 5y agoits what plants crave!
- a1369209993 5y agoIt also frequently contains deuterium hydroxide, a chemical used in nuclear reactors and the manufacture of thermonuclear bombs.
- canadianfella 5y agoWhat would be the content other than a simple joke?
- m3kw9 5y agoThis Chemical Probably Does Not Exist
- nom 5y agoNow someone get thisphotodoesnotexist.com and show an image of random pixels.
- diogenesjunior 5y agoMany of the chemicals generated actually do exist.
- honie 5y agoIt appears that the molecules on the page are generated with a machine learning algorithm trained on a small organic molecules dataset that is heavily biased towards cyclic, particular nitrogen heterocyclic, structures (I only sampled about 40 of them, so it could also have just been my luck). The model seems to have learnt chemistry pretty well because, as many have already pointed out, most of the molecules generated do actually exist (or are extremely likely accessible if they haven't already been documented). Even the ones with strange bond angles have otherwise perfectly normal number of bonds. The only time where I get molecules that cannot possibly exist are those with overlapping atoms that just defy known physics. Addendum: it is worth noting that the model might actually have been trained with data that contain bond lengths, or even spatial information if no post-generation geometry optimisation is performed before a molecule is rendered.
- messe 5y agoSo https://thischemicalprobablyexists.com https://thischemicalprobablyexists.com might be a better title? I'm not a chemist, I've an undergrad degree in physics/mathematics. Intuitively, your answer sounds right, but I'm not in a position to judge for sure.
- bee_rider 5y agoChemistry is just the integral of physics (he said, extremely sophomoricly), so you should be able to work it out.
- rflrob 5y agoThis chemical could probably be made but doesn’t exist seems most accurate. https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/chemical-space-is-big-really-big/7899.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/chemical-space-is-big...
- CamperBob2 5y agoI'll wait for https://iwontworkwiththischemical.com https://iwontworkwiththischemical.com.
- 5y ago
- iskander 5y agoFirst one I pulled up I recognized as actually existing. Seems like they need a blacklist of real chemicals?
- Aperocky 5y agoShould rename to 'This Chemical Might Exist'
- pama 5y agoPrevious submission with comment from creator is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26937223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26937223
- aazaa 5y agoThat's an interesting way to phrase it. I get that this is a play off of the "This X doesn't exist.", where X is a machine-generated entity such as a picture of a cat or the bio for a person. If by "chemical" you mean "substance (as represented by this molecule)" and if by "exist" you mean "hasn't been made yet," then it might make sense. "This substance (as represented by this molecule) has not been made yet" doesn't have the same ring to it, though. Molecules are abstractions. Leaky ones at that.
- prirai 5y agoDuplicate..seriously? Was posted two months ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26937223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26937223
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gus_massa 5y agoFrom the FAQ: > Are reposts ok? > If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates. It's intentional unclear what significant attention means, but the last submission has (3 points | 64 days ago | 3 comments) that is not very significant.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoIf it has never been made, does it exist if the pathway does actually exist?
- diplodocusaur 5y agoI got a lone Hydrogen atom
- elbrownos 5y agoAtomic hydrogen definitely exists
- polynomial 5y agoI'm not a professional chemist, but I'm pretty sure Hydrogen exists: https://i.imgur.com/X1Lo62h.png https://i.imgur.com/X1Lo62h.png
- bartread 5y agoI like this but it would be even more fun if it displayed the IUPAC names of the chemicals it generated because they would be absolutely ludicrous.
- LegionMammal978 5y agoAs it happens, I know of no current system, free or proprietary, which can correctly generate arbitrary IUPAC names. All of them I have seen mess up things such as the nested enclosing mark pattern, stereodescriptor placement (and resulting enclosing mark modifications), lack of enclosing marks, lack of stereodescriptors for undefined stereocenters, lack of omission of locants, locants on substituent groups, use of multiplicative vs. substitutive nomenclature, nomenclature for aldehydes and polynuclear noncarbon oxoacids, cyclic phane nomenclature, italicized letters, and a myriad other parts of IUPAC nomenclature that the Blue Book specifies very clearly. Putting that rant aside, most of these chemicals are small enough to have rather tame IUPAC names. As an example, these are the IUPAC names of the first five molecules I loaded (disregarding stereochemistry): N-{1-[(2-fluorophenyl)methyl]-1H-pyrazol-4-yl}-2-[(pyridin-3-yl)oxy]benzamide N-ethyl-1-{5-[(2-methylcyclopentyl)methoxy]pyridin-2-yl}ethan-1-amine 2-fluoro-N-{4-[3-(hydroxymethyl)azetidine-1-carbonyl]phenyl}benzamide N-(8-methoxy-2H-[1,3]dioxolo[4,5-c]quinolin-7-yl)-2-methylcyclopropane-1-carboxamide 1-ethyl-N-(2,3,5-trimethylcyclohexyl)piperidin-3-amine If you want an example of an absolutely ludicrous IUPAC name, I'd suggest the one I put onto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitotoxin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitotoxin earlier this month.
- TuringTest 5y agoAt what point a 'name' becomes an 'infodump'? :-D Or more aptly, what constitutes a single molecule, rather than a complex structure built from a repetitive pattern of almost-equal components?
- curryst 5y ago> Or more aptly, what constitutes a single molecule, rather than a complex structure built from a repetitive pattern of almost-equal components? The bonds. Not a chemist, but if I remember enough chem 101, all molecules are bonded together by either covalent or ionic bonds between the individual atoms. There are names for some of the common "building blocks" of molecules; i.e. a methyl group is a single carbon with 3 hydrogens bound onto it, and an arbitrary atom on the 4th side. A "complex structure built from a repetitive pattern of almost-equal components" sounds more like a crystal. There are still individual molecules in a crystal, but the molecules are arranged in a precise and repeating pattern.
- voldacar 5y agoThe model might need some more training. Seeing a Fluorine bonded to 4 other atoms is a bit ... odd
- aassddffasdf 5y agoPretty bold title. Seems like it would be more "not known to exist."
- amai 5y agoI've seen it sometimes generates pentagon and heptagon rings. Are these structures actually possible?
- jojohohanon 5y agoDoes it have thiotimoline?