Capsanthin
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 red bell pepper is about thirty million times taller.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- Capsanthin. Often mistaken for capsaicin.
- Height
- 3.0 nm, standing up straight.
- Weight
- 0.97 zeptograms
- Build
- Long and thin. A six-sided ring at one end, a rarer five-sided one at the other.
- Marks
- Ten double bonds in a row, then a ketone. Together they make the red.
- Taste
- Not hot. The heat in peppers is capsaicin, someone else entirely.
- Associates
- Red peppers. Also tiger lilies, and hardly anyone else.
- Weakness
- Yellow peppers don’t make it. Blame one gene.
- Last seen
- A 5 mL tube marked PAPRIKA in the fridge at HQ.
of them in a teaspoon of paprika, give or take.
Paprikas vary. You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Capsanthin, No. 77. 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.