7 most expensive liquids

Quote: Ayecarumba

There are many other fragrances that retail for more than the pedestrian "Chanel No. 5".

Who knows who compiles these lists or how accurate they are. For all we know, they included "Chanel No. 5" because it's recognizable as perfume to large numbers of people.

Quote: Pacomartin

18. Saffron

Some hasty research tells me saffron sells wholesale at around $11,000 per kilo (a bit over two pounds). It's very labor intensive.

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5. Tritium

Hasty research yesterday puts the price at around $30,000 per gram. Apparently its main use is in EXIT signs. About 400 grams are used each year. It's made in some kinds of nuclear reactors (not in all), and frequently is contaminated with Helium-3. I'm not sure whether it occur s naturally on Earth. It's very weakly radioactive.

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1. Antimatter (what do you keep it in?)

Magnetic fields.

You need particle accelerators to make any, and there are currently no uses for it outside of research. In the book Physics of the Impossible, Dr. Michio Kaku points out particle accelerators are not designed to produce antimatter. Presumably machines designed for the purpose could make it more cheaply, though it would still be very expensive.

Quote: Nareed

Magnetic fields.

They have kept it trapped for just over 16 minutes. That is impressive as the previous record was under 1/5 of a second.

BTW: Isn't antimatter just matter travelling backwards in time?

I thought diamonds were not at all scarce, simply subject to cartel pricing. The grad student who staked a diamond claim after the Texas Gulf Sulphur strike in Timmons, Ontario was offered five million dollars a year or else the cartel would offer only her type of diamond on the market for twenty years.

What is creme de la mere? Ambergris?

Saffron? I'm sure the ersatz stuff is more profitable.

What about the green stuff in packets in cheap sushi joints? Its from Canada but the real stuff, from Japan, is etremely expensive.

Blood? Consumed or ditched? Value to universal donor?

Gold on your chocolate or your coffee is available in Vegas, can't be all that pricey. Mr. Pew would know, I'm sure. By the way, the Gold is NOT inert but acts as a medicine though most people consuming it are too drunk to know it. White tea with gold is sold in McCau.

White truffles? Pigs around here must be racially prejudiced, they only find black ones. Note: I wish chocolatiers would use a different term.

Quote: Pacomartin

BTW: Isn't antimatter just matter travelling backwards in time?

Sometimes it's hard to know what physicists mean.

I think it was Feynman who came up with this. One way I've heard it is "you can treat antimatter as normal matter travelling backwards in time." Does this mean it's actually traveling backwards in time, or that the math used to describe it is like that of normal matter traveling backward in time? For that matter what does "traveling backward in time" means?

Did you ever read "Ringworld"? The setting is a ring 150 million km in radius and thousands of kilometers wide orbiting a star. In essays related to it, Niven, the author, claims engineers (who are physicists at heart) have told him the Ringworld can be treated mathematically as a suspension bridge with no end points. What the hell does that mean, right?

I'm still working my way through Relativity. It's too bad few scientists are as famous as Einstein, because Relativity is positively conceptual child's play compared to what ahs been shaking off the tree of Quantum mechanics.

Let's say you set up a machine to emit particles with a half-life of 0.001 seconds, and to shoot them at 0.99999999999c at a detector 300 kilometers away. You'd expect to detect half the particles to have decayed by then, as it would take about 0.001 seconds for them to reach the detector, right? Except they're moving at a very high speed, relative to the emitter and detector. So instead you find 99% haven't decayed.

Was that because time moves more slowly for them compared to the detector, or because they appear to travel a smaller distance?

The answer is: six of one and a half dozen of the other :)

Quote: Nareed

I think it was Feynman who came up with this.

Yes

Quote: Nareed

One way I've heard it is "you can treat antimatter as normal matter travelling backwards in time." Does this mean it's actually traveling backwards in time, or that the math used to describe it is like that of normal matter traveling backward in time?

In a philosophical sense it doesn't matter. Reality just happens. Mathematical models are judged by how accurate they predict the future, or how well they explain phenomena. Also they are judged by Occam's razor.

If you throw a ball into the air (not straight up) the path it follows is said to be a parabola. It isn't really a parabola, but under a simple gravitational model, the path turns out to be a parabola. Similarly a simple gravitational model makes orbits into ellipses. Minkowski space time continuum was useful to Einstein in describing his special theory of relativity. Feynman diagrams are simply a convenient way to explain the interaction of matter and antimatter.

We say that it is obvious that parallel lines don't meet. That is considered Euclidean geometry. The concept of a line is a given and the observation that parallel lines don't meet is "obvious". Then people got the idea that points and lines should be "undefined", and the axiom that parallel lines don't meet is an "assumption".

So what if a "line" describes a great circle. Then there is no such thing as "lines that don't meet" because any two great circles always meet in two places (at antipodes). Anyway, this was the basis for the first two non-Euclidean geometries; hyperbolic geometry (or Lobachevsky-Bolyai-Gauss geometry) and elliptic geometry (or Riemannian geometry).

Quote: Pacomartin

In a philosophical sense it doesn't matter.

It matters most in that sense. Are antimatter particles traveling backwards in time? If so, why? How?

Quote: Pacomartin

I doubt that the source that I pulled those numbers from is really interested in being 100% accurate. It wouldn't be interesting if it was just a list of mostly perfumes.

What I'd like to know is the actual production costs of many of these things. I assume the list is of market prices. Sometimes the production costs are incredibly lower, and the high price comes down to rarity. They may also be high due to demand. Truffles, for example, are rare and in high demand. Others have non-production costs associated to them, like the illicit drugs listed. I'm sure cocaine and heroin, if produced commercially in the open, would be rather cheap. Anesthetics that use medical types of cocaine are not exceedingly expensive; neither is morphine, which is similar to heroin.

Now, there are urban legends as well. One states diamonds are not that rare and don't cost that much to obtain and shape, but that demand is artificially high due to the engagement ring industry or something. Another legend is that most perfumes cost only a few pennies to make, and the expense lies solely int he crystal flasks used to keep them in, and/or the designer label they wear.

I know a little about the latter. Synthetic essences mixed with volatile solvents are dirt cheap and approximate certain fragrances rather well. You can buy them at many places for very little money. Natural essences derived from plants, seeds and fruits are another matter, involving higher amounts of labor, skill and resources. But I've no idea how expensive they are.

In food there's something similar: vanilla (really, plain vanilla).

See, you can make vanilla essence from the bean itself. This is expensive, but tastes richer and better than the cheap synthetic version. On the other hand, you don't need as much of it if it's concentrated. So that a 29 ml flask of essence can net you about the same amount of flavoring in desserts as a 250 ml bottle of synthetic vanilla flavoring. But the essence costs about 5 times as much.

Then there is natural vanilla flavoring. This is vanilla essence mixed in solution. Why? It's easier to handle in home recipes. Adding 1/8th teaspoon of vanilla essence is rather difficult, compared to 1 tsp. natural vanilla flavoring.

The other problem is the synthetic stuff is so cheap, vanilla has become like salt in many dessert recipes. That is, they all use it. But it doesn't combine the same way with everything. In cheesecake, for example, it gets rather lost. So for that I use cheap flavoring (if at all). But if you're making vanilla ice cream, then the milk, egg and sugar combine rather well and I'd use the real essence for a richer flavor (I've never made ice cream, though). It also goes well with coffee and milk.

As for diamonds may I suggest you consider the following wars:

The War of Zionist Aggression.
The Boer War.
The Anglo-Boer War.

They are of course the exact same war but the names reveal one's point of view and knowledge of economic motivation, unless of course you think those Redcoats marched into the Trans Vaal for altruistic motives rather than gold and diamonds. And forget that that lion prowling around the NYC subway stop was Oppenheimer Fund advertising and that the Oppenheimer money and DeBeers money is heavily invested in Australia's industry.

Fragrances.. ah vanilla. By law, in Switzerland, it must be included in chocolate or the product may not be sold in Switzerland as chocolate or exported at all.

And in any perfume, top notes and base notes depend on quality of the ingredients. Knockoffs are easily obtained and often not all that different except to the experts.

Quote: Pacomartin

I doubt that the source that I pulled those numbers from is really interested in being 100% accurate...

Hmm... If the list were 100% accurate, as of today, what would be the actual top 10?