Chapter 5: CHEMICAL REPORT FROM MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY[i]
Miskatonic University
Chemistry Department
June 23rd, 1882
Description: Unknown specimen of probable metallic substance. Substance’s initial appearance is a hot, viscous globule approximately golf ball sized. Specimen was retrieved from the property of one Ammi Pierce. Mr. Pierce claims the object’s origin is a meteor that struck his property on or about the June 20th, 1882. The remarkable feature seems to be that the original specimen obtained from Mr. Pierce’s property was approximately baseball sized and was observed by no less than 5 people to have shrunk.
Temperature: 420 degrees F. 215 degrees C.
Texture: The metallic substance is a malleable, viscous substance of a soft, gooey texture lying part way between a solid and a liquid.
Color: Multiple colors; some colors defy categorization into known spectrum when heated before the spectroscope.
Testing Results:
1. Substance shows high affinity for silicon.
2. Substance produces no occluded gases when heated on charcoal.
3. Substance is wholly negative in borax bead.
4. Substance non-volatile at any producible temperature, including that of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe.
5. On anvil substance appears highly malleable.
6. In darkroom substance’s luminosity is very marked.
7. Substance mysteriously loses mass while maintaining heat. Heat loss doesn’t appear through usual mechanisms of conduction, convection, and radiation. After 24 hours the sample had been reduced from a 1-inch diameter globule to a quarter inch diameter globule in a span of 22 hours. The temperature in that time went from 420 F to only 400 F.
8. Testing in crucible with reagents yielded marked invulnerability. The lab used the 16 reagents from von Fehling’s Reagent List but none produced any significant reaction beyond Nitric Acid, which yielded mild hissing and Nitro-Hydrochloric Acid, which yielded mild hissing and spattering.
9. Magnetic tests were positive at 7 gauss thus indicating the metallic nature of the substance.
10. Faint traces of the Widmanstatten patterns were found similar to those found on octahedrite iron meteorites and some pallasites on the specimen after immersion in acid bath.
11. Further tests were unable to be conducted due to the specimen’s complete dissipation.
Professor Charles R. Browne
[i] Everything in this chapter is a reference to “The Colour Out of Space” by H.P. Lovecraft.
Visions of the Dark 