Chemical Vampires

The lack of a shadow indicates that vampires do not absorb or scatter any of the light impinging on them, or at least not in the visible portion of the spectrum.

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This would appear to preclude any form of traditional absorption spectroscopy at visible wavelengths. We would note, however, that there is essentially no information on whether vampires absorb light at other wavelengths. Thus, absorption spectroscopy remains a future possibility at non-visible infrared, x-ray, etc. It should be noted that the fact that vampires do not cast visible shadows raises a dilemma.

If vampires do not absorb or scatter visible light, i. The only possible solution is that vampires must emit light while in both their solid and gaseous forms. Given their propensity to lurk in shadows, it is likely that vampires fluoresce or phosphoresce with fairly short triplet lifetimes to allow prompt intersystem crossing as opposed to behaving like a blackbody.

This suggests it may be worth considering various forms of emission spectroscopy. If ever there were something that vibrates and has a permanent dipole, it would be vampire g! Thus vibrational and rotational emission spectroscopy of vampires should be particularly fruitful once appropriate standards are measured in the laboratory. Since there are multiple reports of the possibility of vampires in space e. Unfortunately, we anticipate that such measurements will ultimately be very difficult to make.

Again, since vampires do not produce a reflection in mirrors, they will be invisible to many of the optical elements found in devices that measure spectra.

Vampires Will Never Hurt You

Summary Of course, the issues we have discussed here represent only a partial list of the possible properties of gas phase vampires, and we have done more to illuminate our ignorance of vampires in this state than to quantify their properties. A host of additional questions easily come to mind. For example, are vampiric gases combustible? Can multiple vampires mix with each other in the gas state? What do gaseous vampires smell like? How does vampiric gas react with ozone? Could they cause ozone depletion? Are vampires in the gas phase subject to any environmental or OSHA regulations?

What is the LD 50? Having dug up these issues and exposed them to the light of day, it is our hope that the scientific community will now consider ways in which we can nail down the lid on these problems. Note that this effort only addresses a small portion of the questions we have in regards to vampires.

Video: Mummies, ghosts and vampires: A 'Spooking' of Chemistry special

For example, we know a vampire creates another vampire by biting a person, but is saliva-to-blood the only pathway for transmission? If a vampire spits in your eye or kisses you, do you catch vampirism? Suppose you share needles with a vampire? Can a vampire slayer catch vampirism if he has an open sore on his hand while driving the wooden stake? What if a mosquito bites a vampire and then bites you?

Another issue of interest: They take in blood, they grow hair, and they bleed. What happens if a vampire pees in running water? What happens if you pee on a vampire?

Video: Mummies, ghosts and vampires: A 'Spooking' of Chemistry special

If water or food contaminated with vampire urine is consumed does one become a vampire? Oh, and one more: See ACP1 acid phosphatase 1, soluble. Thereby placing a stake with our names in the heart of these issues, so to speak. Please enable JavaScript in your browser preferences. Heartthrob vampires are, of course, fictional creatures drawn from a rich history of myth and reality. Click ahead to learn more. This 16th-century woman, whose remains were excavated during an archaeological dig near Venice, apparently had a brick shoved into her trap because she was thought to have a thirst for human blood.

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Scholars trace the myth that humans rise from the dead and suck the blood of others to medieval ignorance about how diseases spread and bodies decompose. When mass graves were re-opened during epidemics to deposit fresh corpses, the diggers often encountered older, bloated bodies with blood seeping out of their mouths — conditions that scientists now know result from the buildup of gases in decomposing organs.

In earlier times, however, this was regarded as a sign that the corpses were drinking the blood of others.

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Medieval Italians thought that the only known way to kill the undead was to stick a brick in their mouths so that they would starve, according to Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist and anthropologist at Florence University. Bloodthirsty bats entered the vampire mythology when explorers of the New World returned to Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries with tales of winged mammals that fed on the blood of humans and their livestock under the cover of night, biologist Bill Schutt says in his book "Dark Banquet.

Bats were prime candidates for superstition and unwarranted fear, and they would become forever linked to vampyrism in with the publication of Bram Stoker's novel, 'Dracula,'" he writes. The Dracula character was inspired by a 15th-century Romanian warlord who impaled his victims with a wooden stake and then covered the landscape with the decaying bodies to scare off his enemies.

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This warlord was named Vlad III. Vlad II, his father, was indoctrinated into the Order of the Dragon around and was thereafter known as Vlad Dracul. Mummies, ghosts and vampires are three Halloween topics that can make your hair stand on end. But fear not, these classic figures are not as scary as they appear. Is it really possible that mummies, swamps and soap could all be related? Could vampires walk among us? Watch as Speaking of Chemistry's Judy Lavelle explains the science behind these horrors and more:. Halloween spending hikes reveal our fascination with the macabre.

In the gloom of the economy, with scary unemployment figures, you might expect consumers to be hiding from Halloween in their darkened homes with the porch lights off. But a recent National Retail Federation survey shows Werewolves, ghosts, and vampires—with the days getting shorter and colder, and Halloween fast approaching, our imaginations turn to the ghouls that supposedly come out around this time of year. Vampires, one of history's