Astaxanthin
File sealed
The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.
Booking photographs
The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 0.1 nm. A 10-inch lobster is about eighty million times longer.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- Astaxanthin. Named after the lobster. Once booked as “salmon acid.”
- Height
- 3.1 nm, standing on end.
- Weight
- 0.99 zeptograms
- Color
- Slate blue in a live lobster, gripped by a protein. Boiling breaks the grip: red.
- Marks
- Thirteen double bonds in a row. They make the red.
- Associates
- Salmon. It’s the pink in their flesh.
- Origins
- Algae that turn dried-up birdbaths blood red.
- Last seen
- A 5 mL tube marked LOBSTER in the freezer at HQ.
of them in an ounce of lobster shell, give or take.
Lobsters vary. You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Astaxanthin, No. 14. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.
Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.
Not a player yet? Join the Epic Quest: the real role-playing game of Molecular Reality, a nanopore lab, with the CEO as gamemaster.