A New Kind of Chemistry

Thanks to Kyle Schiller at Marathon Fusion for conversations and information that informed this essay. All errors are my own.Much of modern civilization is built on top of chemical reactions, either to produce new materials (as in the blast furnace, which converts iron oxide into metallic iron), or to generate energy. Chemical reactions, as we’ve previously noted, work by rearranging how atoms hold their outermost electrons. Combine an atom of sodium and an atom of chlorine, for instance, and so...