Helium hydride ion
In The Demon Job she's Helen: the first molecule there ever was, kept in a ring of electric fields in a lab, who hires Nick to find out what the Demon runs on.
Helium hydride ion plays Helen in The Demon Job
A detective made of water, a client who was the first molecule there ever was, and a demon who says he can sort for nothing.
Watch from 2:31, where Helen first appears → or from the start
Booking photographs
The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 0.02 nm. Helium dark, hydrogen light. Its nebula is about six trillion trillion times longer.
Rap sheet
- Being first: formed the universe's first molecular bond, by radiative association.
- Acidity in the first degree: the strongest acid known; it hands its proton to anything.
- Resisting arrest: no bottle can hold it; it has only ever been kept by electric fields, in vacuum.
- Hiding: sought in space from the late 1970s; found in 2019, in 71 minutes of looking.
- Associating with quantum computers: the first variational quantum eigensolver was tested on it (2014).
- Answers to
- HeH+, helonium, protonated helium.
- Height
- 0.33 nm. Nuclei: 0.077 nm apart.
- Weight
- 8.3 yoctograms.
- Build
- Three protons, two neutrons, two electrons.
- Habits
- Strongest acid known. No bottle can hold it.
- Associates
- Quantum computers. The first VQE was tested on it.
- Status
- Sought in space from the late 1970s. Found in 71 minutes of looking.
- Last seen
- In NGC 7027, a 600-year-old nebula about 3,000 light-years away.
- M.O.
- A neutral helium atom meets a free proton and sheds the energy as a photon: He + H⁺ → HeH⁺ + hν. Its own destruction, HeH⁺ + H → He + H₂⁺, opened the first road to molecular hydrogen.
- Associates
- the proton; molecular hydrogen, its successor; NGC 7027, the nebula where it was caught; quantum computers
- Priors
- Made in labs since 1925; predicted in nebulae from the late 1970s; detected in NGC 7027 in 2019 by a telescope flying in the stratosphere.
of them in an inch-square column from the nebula’s center to its edge, give or take.
You’ve never seen one.
“The first molecule, and no bottle can hold it. Only fields.” — Keltar, on the case
Case notes: the account
When the universe had cooled below some 4,000 kelvin, in its first few hundred thousand years, neutral helium formed the first molecular bond with a proton: HeH⁺. (He₂⁺ has a rival claim.) The ion is the strongest acid known and would give its proton to any atom or molecule it met. No bottle can hold it, but electric fields can: it has been stored in a cryogenic ion storage ring and in a 4 K ion trap.
Why the arrow runs one way: 'All dissipative structures in the universe including all forms of life, owe their existence to the fact that the universe started in a low entropy state and has not yet reached equilibrium.' That low entropy was gravitational, in matter spread almost perfectly smoothly. Every gradient in this series, from ATP to the cochlear battery to sunlight, is that account being drawn down. Penrose's own estimate of how improbable such a start is: worse than one in 10^10^123.
Sources
- Güsten R. et al. 2019, Nature 568:357-359, doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1090-x
- Lineweaver C. H. & Egan C. A. 2008, Phys. Life Rev. 5:225-242, doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2008.08.002
- Penrose R. 1989, The Emperor's New Mind, ch. 7
- Galli D. & Palla F. 2013, Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. (He₂⁺ and the first molecules)
- Novotný O. et al. 2019, Science (HeH⁺ in a storage ring)
The interrogation room
Keltar is an AI character. He sticks to the file; the conversation is saved and Kent, the CEO, can read it.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Helium hydride ion, No. 113 of the exotic forty. 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.