Life on Mars, Fading history of dyes, Department of obscure information

Life on Mars

Little green men from Mars have long been a part of human lore, perhaps dating back to the ancient Greeks or Romans. We think we know now that Mars doesn't have little green men, women, or children, given the recent success of the Mars rovers. But scuttlebutt bouncing around the resort hotels on Waikiki Beach at the recent Pacifichem conference in Hawaii suggested that real people might attempt to inhabit the red planet.

During a talk on SF₅ chemistry, Joseph S. Thrasher of the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, took to heart the "Bridging Fundamental and Applied Chemistry" theme of an inorganic fluorine chemistry symposium. Thrasher suggested that a possible application for the long-sought-after SF₅NO₂ that had finally been prepared by his group would be as a greenhouse gas that, appropriately dispersed into Mars's atmosphere, could warm the planet enough to make it habitable (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2006, 45, 938).

The whole thing got started a few years ago when a paper on terraforming Mars appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (2001, 98, 2154). The paper outlines a supposition that if the martian atmosphere could somehow acquire an Earth-like composition and pressure, then an Earth-like temperature could be maintained by adding a parts-per-billion cocktail of super greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The requisite cocktail would include chlorofluorocarbons, fluorocarbons, and sulfur fluorides (such as SF₆ and SF₅CF₃).

One of the PNAS paper's coauthors, Joseph S. Francisco of Purdue University, learned about Thrasher's early work on the elusive SF₅NO₂ and noticed that some of its strong infrared spectral bands were slightly shifted from the proposed martian cocktail. Francisco suggested that Thrasher might want to use terraforming Mars as a rationale to funding agencies to support the sulfur-fluorine research. So Thrasher mentioned this "potential" during his talk. Rumors that Thrasher was going to colonize Mars soon got up and down the beach in Hawaii.

Although Thrasher thought it "appropriate to accentuate the material" on terraforming Mars, "in the end the S-N bond is so long that SF₅NO₂ could not itself be useful in this application" because it easily decomposes, he told Newscripts. Still, Thrasher is pleased with the use of the low-energy "superblue" diazo light source to effect the tricky photolysis of SF₅Br to make SF₅NO₂. "We think that a lot of standard lab photochemistry could be done with this light source, which is safer," he said.

The University of Southern California's Karl O. Christe later suggested that all was not lost, as SF₅NO₂'s record 1.903-Å S(VI)-N bond length [normal S(VI)-N bonds are about 1.7 Å] along with a few other "novel" results from the Pacifichem fluorine symposium would be suitable for recognition by "Guinness World Records."

Fading history of dyes

Over the electronic transom theother day came a comment from a reader about a C&EN article on using dye nanoparticles to increase the sensitivity of colorimetric test strips used to detect heavy metals (C&EN, Jan. 9, page 6). "It's good to see that some research is still being done in an area that launched the synthetic chemical industry in 1856 when William H. Perkin made mauve dye from coal tar," notes Robert J. Baptista of Orange, Texas.

Baptista is a retired dye man, having worked for Verona Dyestuff Co., a part of Mobay Corp., which eventually ended up as Bayer Corp. (aspirin was involved). He pointed out a website he created that covers the history of the dye industry in the U.S. (colorantshistory.org). Indeed, the website is chock full of historical information about dye companies and is a treasure trove of old photographs and illustrations. Over the years, Baptista saved dye reports, photos, and other memorabilia as various dye plants closed. He has donated his collection to the Chemical Heritage Foundation "to preserve the history of an industry that is fading fast in the U.S.," he says.

Department ofobscure information

Pop-up poultry timers, used to tell when your bird is done, were implanted into some 30 million turkeys last Thanksgiving.

Adhesives account for less than 3% of the material cost of an envelope, but they are the top cause for complaints to envelope companies.

This week's column was written by Steve Ritter. Please send comments and suggestions to newscripts@acs.org.