It bothers me in science fiction when someone analyzes an object and says “It contains no known elements.” It sounds exotic, but that’s just not how chemistry works. The periodic table is pretty much set. There are probably a few elements left to discover at the extremes, but all the ones we’ve recently found in particle colliders with atomic masses nearing the 300’s are hilariously radioactive and only exist for nanoseconds. No one is making a spear tip or a phaser or body armor out of them. I’m not saying we’re done with chemistry, just that the elements are pretty nearly sorted at this point.

You could learn a lot about something by studying the egg it came out of, but if you’d never seen a bird before, could you tell what color feathers it had, or even what a feather was? Maybe if there was some sort of DNA left in the egg, but it’d be a lot of work.

Edit: Here’s a shot of Deus’s desk without all the word clutter.

This page colored by Keith.

Patreon supporters can view this page at twice the size! (as soon as I wake up and post it then immediately go back to sleep since Patreon doesn’t have a way to schedule posts yet.) $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)

Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.