tristynalxander@mander.xyz 2 days ago
I admit that the ionic liquids are an interesting concept for strange life. That said, most the ones they have look far too complex to have formed by any natural process in any meaningful amount, and anything that could form naturally doesn’t seem likely to have good a temperature range for compatible polymers. Maybe there’s something weird I’m missing (something that increases the NH3 liquid range and doesn’t react with siloconates or something crazy like that), but I’d be extremely skeptical of life without water.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
One of the things I will never forgive Chemistry for is how it didn’t introduce Acid and Bases from the perspective of a continuum of modifications on Water molecules that can accentuate into an “imbalance”.
It makes it all so less arbitrary from that perspective, but Chemistry is atrocious with the big idea stuff lol.
Gsus4@mander.xyz 2 days ago
But isnt that what the pH level measures: the -log(concentration of H3O+)?
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Yes that is precisely what it measure, but Chemistry teachers confidently taught me the pH scale over and over again like an an arbitrary continuum to memorize until I finally had it framed in a perspective that illuminated the central role of water.
Yes technically if you just learn the pH scale you should be able to conclude that I guess but sorry not sorry most chemistry I have dealt with is completely ignorant of the power of teaching people big ideas. Everything is fiddly, disconnected and full of little memorization rules that feel utterly arbitrary in chemistry.
If my geology professors had taught chemistry they would have started with big ideas like that, but chemists taught me chemistry.