Talk:Polywater

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I know it spoils the narrative, but shouldn't pathological science appear in the opener? Wetman 21:09, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] inconsistency

There seems to be an inconsitency in the article. At the beginning, the properties of the hypothetical substance are said to include a "freezing point of −40 °C or lower, a boiling point of 150 °C or greater". Later, it is said that sweat was found to have the same properties, and that "when subjected to chemical analysis, samples of polywater were invariably contaminated with other substances (explaining the changes in melting and boiling points)". I don't know what sort of contaminations could cause such enormous changes in the freezing point and boiling point, but I'm pretty sure that a) sweat doesn't have these properties and that b) if some contamination were indeed able to produce such properties, it wouldn't take sophisticated chemical analysis to see that the water was contaminated. Fpahl 17:31, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I know it spoils the narrative, but shouldn't too much freaking time on your hands be in the opener?

[edit] Category

Should this really be in Category:Hoaxes in science? I thought a hoax was more when it is intentional, rather than a mistake, like this... Phlip 14:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The Russians really thought they were onto something. Reminds me of cold fusion. --Lyle 04:44, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In Fiction

Though ice nine from Cat's Cradle and polywater are similar, I'm not sure anybody ever proposed that polywater was self-catalytic as ice nine was in the book.Bjsamelsonjones 16:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

"A material similar to polywater, Ice-9, also figures prominently in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle." -- I edited this out as Cat's Cradle is already mentioned in the article, and they really aren't the same at all (just one "doomsday scenario" was similar to the ice nine scenario). --24.16.251.40 05:50, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

F. J. Donahoe did publish a warning about polywater in 1969, in the journal Nature. He called it the most dangerous material on earth. And speculated that polywater was the reason for Venus missing water. So polywater was speculated as self-catalytic by some. Reko (talk) 12:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)