(Bad) Science in your dreams.

[Idhan]

I'm not sure if this is exactly on topic for the "fictional science" forum, but does anyone else have dreams with science in them that make you want to tell your subconscious "you fail biology/chemistry/physics/whatever forever?"

1. Waste plastics turn into benzene? One dream I had a few months ago was one in which there was a landfill full of discarded plastics, cardboard, etc, that was formerly sealed that ruptured somehow. My subconscious mind apparently noted that plastics are hydrocarbons, that systems tend toward lower free energy/more stability, and that benzene is a stable, low-free energy hydrocarbon. As a result all of the plastic and crap in the landfill had degraded into benzene. The massive benzene spill from the landfill was, of course, a huge disaster. I think the dream-landfill was also near the Indiana Dunes, and it was around the same place as a cooling tower in the real Indiana Dunes.

2. Intravenous ATP as life support? Another dream I had a while ago was one where I was visiting an elderly friend of the family of mine, who has rather advanced dementia. Anyway, in real life she's lost a fair amount of weight and has some trouble eating. When she was compos mentis, she had specified that she didn't want any intubation or anything. Anyway, in the dream, doctors at the nursing home she's in had started giving her intravenous ATP. Apparently, my brain was thinking that for someone in a weakened state (never mind her IRL statements about not wanting it), you could just skip glucose and all of those actual nutrients and give people energy by putting ATP in their blood. I don't recall any dream-explanation for how the ATP got from the blood into the cells.

3. Solid, room-temperature carbon dioxide with tetrahedral carbon? One I just had last night: my brother was looking for a sort of case for his smart phone (I don't recall what kind of phone he has IRL). He didn't want one made of silicone for some reason (I don't remember why), which was the only alternative that got discussed in the dream. He got one made out of carbon dioxide instead -- somehow CO₂ that was bonded like SiO₂, with the carbons bonded tetrahedrally to four oxygens which each bonded to another carbon. This was supposed to be stable stuff at room temperature and whatnot.

Any of you have dreams with crappy science in them?

Or, maybe, do any of you have dreams with really insightful science?

[zmatt]

Most of mine revolve around physics fails. And as soon as I realize it, I break the dream and it becomes lucid. Which is pretty cool I guess.

[Technical Ben]

The only one I can think of off the top of my head is relativity. Everyone else moves super fast, and I move really slow. But could be correct if I'm moving close to the speed of light in my dreams...

[Erl Kaarik]

I've sometimes broken my semi-lucid dreams by understanding a science fail.

Like when i walked around on ice of my home town river, and then walked under a bridge to pick up something extra nice, I fell through the ice and started drowning. And then suddenly I realised that "There are no icicles under(flowing)water" and *poof*, I woke up.

[Technical Ben]

I usually realise it's a dream when I can breath the water. Yep, there is not a single super power I do not have in my dreams.

[ikrase]

Two I can remember. One of them was not even bad physics (incidentally, I remember very few dreams, mostly freaky 'OH GOD MAYBE THERE ARE PROPHETIC DREAMS AFTER ALL' nightmares, which I have had four of in my life)

the first was one of these nightmares. A person (dream version of someone I knew and disliked for good reasons) seized me and tossed me in the air. Gravity failed to work. I kept flying up, well past the point where falling back to earth would be lethal, but I kept going up. I woke up a bit after the point where I could see the whole town, was about to fall back down any moment, but had not yet.

The second was more pleasant though it too ended badly. I had made (in a garage workshop) a room tempurature superconductor. It was made of the most oddball stuff you can imagine, forget what I dreamed of, seem to remember yttrium, bacon fat, and various metallic elements scrounged from common materials like metal polish. I remember it was as weird as hell, started out kind of normal, then got wierd and then really wierd like the cake recipie in Portal. The problem was that: 1. It actually superconducted not at room tempurature, but at a lower tempurature, like maybe 15 degrees C. (my shop is cold in the winter). It also was diamagnetic when not superconducting (but I did not know this) so the magnet floating effect was not an indicator. Anyway, I bothered people to evaluate it and was embarrassed when it did not work in heated rooms. I woke up right after finding that it had a Tc a bit below room tempurature.

[Technical Ben]

And most of us just dream about forgetting the trousers.

[Giant Speck]

I absolutely cannot use computers in my dream. I'm really surprised my dreams don't become lucid upon the realization of this.

[SmoothBlade]

My subconscious hates me for some reason, most of my dreams are extremely realistic, only sometimes it makes a science mistake and I realize its a dream. One memorable one was when my subconscious was attempting to play out the worst possible school day for me, being stuck in my chemistry class with the teacher I despised the most. But after a short time, I realized the chemistry had become biology and i knew it was a dream.

Now that I look back on it, I should have realized it was a dream when my teacher locked the door and windows after an announcement was made that a tornado was headed towards the school. w/e.


Another dream was of a tree collapsing onto my house. The main problem here is that my subconscious appears to favor hollywood explosions, and for no reason the house blew up like it was packed tight with gasoline and c4.

[MHD]

Some of my dreams have more *ahem* questionable physiology of erotic character...

[Afif_D]

Well last night i had a dream about my mathematics class. It was rather stupid.
My math sir gave a question," If 20 refrigerators are switched on what is the probabitity that the ozone hole will suffer damage.?"

I tried every1 in my dream to explain it false but nobody believed me..:D

[Giallo]

One of the last nights I dreamed that a team of scientists from CERN and Gran Sasso measured neutrinos going faster than light how stupid, right?

[iChef]

You guys all do fun Science in your dreams. Last night I was walking in the woods in South America for some reason. There were all these mushrooms all over (that shouldn't have been growing in that part of the world at all. So what do I do? Start making spore prints and cataloging the different mushrooms. I pretty sure that is the first time i had a dream about mycology.

[mercutio_stencil]

I don't know if it counts, but the only thing I remember from my dreams last night was the line, "But I'm a respected medical professional, and you're a sandwich."

[Idhan]

I don't know if it counts, but the only thing I remember from my dreams last night was the line, "But I'm a respected medical professional, and you're a sandwich."

Bad science or not, that's a fantastic one-liner.

[JamesP]

Do you expect me to talk?

No, Mr Sandvich, I expect you to be delicious.

[KrO2]

I am now waiting for a chance to use this line in conversation. It'll probably be a long wait, since I have no plans to becoming a medical professional, let alone a respected one, and I do not often talk with sandwiches.