• Johandea@feddit.nu
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    2 months ago

    Can you, though? Can you lick a gas? Am I licking the atmosphere when I stick my tongue out?

    Plenty of them are also so rare that there isn’t enough of them to form any lickable matter; solid, liquid or gaseous.

    Some have such an incredibly short half-life, you cannot lick it before it decays into something else.

    • Ace@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      This really feels like we’re going to descend into an “is water wet”-style debate. Those are always fun.

      I think I’d still consider it a lick even if you just contact one atom of a substance to your tongue. You could even fire it at your tongue with the LHC and I’d still be willing to go along with calling that a lick, using the term very loosely.

      I’m less sure on the gas, but fuck it, sure, sticking your tongue into a gas can be a lick between friends. Alternately you could condense/freeze it and lick that form, but that might be worse.

      There’s no getting away from the idea that it would be very difficult to lick an atom with sub-millisecond half life. Unless… you create it already inside your tongue! I’m sure we could do that somehow. Probably involving magnets.