this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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Also: are the most conducive

  • oxygen
  • hydrogen
  • nitrogen
  • carbon
all 16 comments
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

I mean, you could start almost at the very top.

Skip hydrogen which is an obvious need and we're right at something that's not particularly helpful with either the creation or the sustenance of life. Helium has advanced use in MRI machines, and is fun in party balloons and squeaky voice tricks, but we got by for millennia without any of that. Relatively harmless otherwise, but not necessary.

Lithium? It does find itself in biological places often in place of more important things like sodium or potassium, but it's neither necessary nor completely worthless, I guess.

My vote, though, for the worst of the top of the periodic table: Beryllium. Toxic. No biological function except to cause problems. Helps make pretty crystals, but the same is true of lots of less harmful elements. In that sense then, completely worthless.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Arsenic helped a lot of people before divorce was common

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Wait, how?

Did people give each other arsenic offerings as an expression of wanting to divorce like marriage bread is to marriage?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

No I was making a lighthearted quip about poisoning one's abusive husband

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Lead's gotta be up there in terms of net negative impact on us as a whole.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago

Definitely in the lead [whacky races cat wheezing laugh]

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago

All the noble gases imo.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Most of the heavy metals (yes, that includes the radioactive ones)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Polonium is definitely near the top of the list.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

All the radioactive ones maybe?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

I forgot almost immediately that I asked for worthless lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago

My question is genuine though, I'm not biophysics expert, I know there are radioactive elements in our body, but are they worthless? Probably the least meaningful to sustaining life would be least reactive elements if that makes sence, but life is more about energy of chemical reactions between molecules, not individual elements

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Gold? I don't think any life uses it for sustenance outside of technological and sociological applications.