3200: Chemical Formula

Chemical Formula

|< < Prev #3200 (January 28, 2026)

Title text: Some of the atoms in the molecule are very weakly bound.

|< < Prev Random Explanation

Explanation

This is one of 60 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

The universe contains atoms such as carbon.

Transcript

This is one of 40 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[A long panel with a chemical formula trailing off the right side]

C-10-76 H-10-80 Ac-10-67 Ag-10-69 Al-10-75 Am-10-26 Ar-10-75 As-10-70 At-10-47 Au-10-69 B-10-71 Ba-10-70 Be

[Caption below the panel:] The approximate chemical formula for the universe

  Add comment        Create topic (use sparingly)       Refresh 

Discussion

I'm disappointed that it wasn't scrollable. 2001:41D0:8:5062:0:0:0:1 20:20, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

+1 And funny to think that the universe contains less than a few hundred mol of Americium. --2001:16B8:CC03:E100:8552:6543:7CF4:9AE7 20:57, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

If anyone's interested in an accessible resource for getting more data like this, may I suggest https://ptable.com/#Properties/Abundance/Universe (which I believe derives data from IUPAC sources) Dextrous Fred (talk) 20:37, 28 January 2026 (UTC) surprised to see so much Astatine, he himself declared, that stuff doesnt want to exist so I expected yet a few powers of ten less

This does make me curious: how would neutronium be represented in a chemical formula? Or would it be? My impression is it kind of exists 'outside' of chemistry... -Kalil 147.81.60.76 21:12, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Neutron stars would be represented with n with various mass numbers. And there are no more than 1 mmol (6.02214076×10²⁰) of neutron stars. 2001:4C4E:1C09:EC00:7932:264E:A9E0:8ED0 21:38, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

What about adding mass numbers? For example, most of the hydrogen is ¹H, with small amounts of ²H and trace amounts of ³H. 2001:4C4E:1C09:EC00:7932:264E:A9E0:8ED0 21:38, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Oh look, it's the 3200th comic! Yay I guess! --DollarStoreBa'al^Converse 22:46, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

An unregistered user (198.48.180.159) added a note that the chemical formula "C11H15NO2" (i.e. C₁₁H₁₅NO₂) "has 302 registered isomers". I don't know the source for that number or where those isomers are registered. (It's the formula for MDMA, which is, as noted, "not good to eat".) Would that be the CAS registry? BunsenH (talk) 23:20, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

10^26 atoms of americium is about 40 kg. But it looks like humans produced tons of americium: https://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/np_237_and_americium.pdf . If there are other civilizations in the observable Universe, then the amount of americium in the Universe is even higher. So I guess the formula counts only naturally produced elements. But even then it seems underestimated. Alexei Kopylov (talk) 23:45, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

In everything that I've checked (I expanded the "list of names" into a table), I could not discover any universal quantity of americium that was close to Randall's apparent source. Can't exclude the possibility that artificially nucleogenesis played a part in his figures (while mine are from how much was created 'naturally'), but I've just had to go along with it being a completely wrong figure (for the ultimate universal ranking). Much as boron might be given slightly mismagnituded.

However, if anyone thinks they have the same source that led to the comic's values (and can reconfirm beryllium's estimated order of magnitude, which is the only reason I decided to start on compiling this amount of extended data, which is actually for all 118 humanly known elements), then you're welcome to correct anything that I left in an incorrect state. 81.179.199.253 00:16, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

...but what if you had a mole of universes?
        Add comment