Red mercury

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Red mercury or Red Mercury is a speculative term to denote different chemical substances which could actually or hypothetically exist or originate only fantastic or mysterious speculations. There is no chemical substance that is correctly referred to by it. The element mercury occurs in its pure form only in a silver-gray modification. In nature it occurs mostly in connection with sulfur (HgS). This mineral, called cinnabarite or vermilion, is red in color.

After a publication in "Nucleonics Week" from 1993, the term "Красная ртуть" ("Red Mercury" or "Red Mercury") was used as the code for the lithium isotope 6 Li ("Lithium-6") during the Soviet Union . 6 Li is required as a component of the fusion fuel 6 Li-deuteride (an isotopomer of lithium hydride ) for the fusion part of a Teller-Ulam bomb ("Sakharov's third idea"). Large amounts of mercury are used to produce lithium-6, which in the further course of the process contaminates the lithium end product - a gel-like substance of bright red color - to a certain extent without adversely affecting its intended use.

References in the film

  • In the film RED 2, there is a bomb made of red mercury in Moscow, hidden under Red Square .
  • In the movie Mega Shark vs. Kolossos , the humanoid robot "Kolossos" is operated with "Red Mercury".
  • In the series Spooks , season 3, episode 2, MI5 is pursuing allegedly existing "Red Mercury", which an indebted scientist had sold to a criminal organization.
  • The supercop with Terence Hill has a reference to red plutonium.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Killefit and Kappes" . Fraud business with the phantom substance Red Mercury. In: Der Spiegel . No. 6 , 1994, pp. 79-81 ( online [PDF]).
  2. ↑ NN: 'Red Mercury' is 6 Lithium, Russian Weaponsmiths Say. Nucleonics Week, Jul 22, 1993, p. 10, NTI