MovieChat Forums > Alien (1979) Discussion > If the Alien/Xenomorph had such powerful...

If the Alien/Xenomorph had such powerful acid for blood ...


why would they not go the second step of having or evolving a way to squirt it out or spit it on something it wants to attack or destroy?

If the Alien was organic, it could not have acid for blood. As Breaking Bad taught us, organic carbon based life, i.e. human bodies are dissolved by acid.

So, the Alien is non-organic ... in which case why would it need a human or other kind of living being to gestate in? Why did it not feed off Kane? What would it have eaten from Kane's system?

I love this movie, but is there really anything to discuss about it 40 years later? It was a horror movie.

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Why can't porcupines shoot their quills at predators?

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They can in cartoons.

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Interesting question , maybe it's to do with high levels of oxygen, the blood is dormant until it's exposed to oxygen and that changes it's bloods chemical composition, as we don't know if it has lungs and breathes like most lifeforms we know of, butterfly's for example do not have lungs.
So possibly it takes and needs a small amounts of oxygen like the butterfly not via lungs and takes in a small controlled amount and oxygen over a certain level is when it turns from a stable fluid to toxic.

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Maybe it's not carbon based, maybe there are forms of life out there that would seem fantastical by our standards. Acidic could be normal ph for them so not something they'd evolve as a weapon. Imagine Prometheus wasn't made and the xenos evolved naturally on a weird acidic planet.

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then how'd they get off their homeward?

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It should be noted that there are animals on earth that are poisonous, as opposed to venomous. In other words, the poison is only transmitted if the animal is eaten. Why didn't those animals take the "next step" and develop a way to project or inject that poison? Because evolution doesn't always work that way.

By being eaten, these animals teach predators they should not be eaten; and, therefore, protect other members of their species from being eaten. The Xenomorphs, if they evolved naturally, could easily take the same evolutionary track. The individual isn't important; only the species is.

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Except for the fact that in the movie is it revealed that these weapons did not evolve, they were engineered.

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This is a very big discussion about analysing imaginary sci fi creatures with real world chemistry!

I dont think life is specifically divided into "organic" or "carbon"
We have no idea what "molecular" acid is
"organic, it could not have acid for blood" makes no sense - you have acid in your stomach.

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> We have no idea what "molecular" acid is

I think YOU are the one that has no idea what "molecular acid is".

Classification of compounds. Thus, acids are defined as proton donors. The most common acids are aqueous solutions of HCl (hydrochloric acid), H2SO4 (sulfuric acid), HNO3 (nitric acid), and H3PO4 (phosphoric acid). Bases, on the other hand, are proton acceptors.


There is a pretty interesting web page on "super acids"
https://edu.rsc.org/everyday-chemistry/whats-the-strongest-acid-in-the-world/4014526.article

No. That title falls to fluoroantimonic acid – a superacid mixture of antimony pentafluoride and hydrofluoric acid. You see, HF loves the idea of donating a fluorine to SbF5, and the resulting SbF6- anion is relatively stable. This all results in what is sometimes (wrongly) called a naked proton (it’s actually ‘solvated’ by a number of other HF molecules to form a fluoronium ion). This super acidic system is the strongest ever measured, with a Hammett acidity function of -28. That’s 100,000 times stronger than magic acid.

Put a lid on it?

This leaves us with only one question: what on earth do you keep it in? Here’s a substance so corrosive it will eat through any container, even one made of glass. The answer is poly(tetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE), or Teflon, thanks to its many C–F bonds – famously described as the toughest bond in organic chemistry. Just the thing to contain the strongest acid in the world


The point is that we see the Alien's blood eating through everything, and not being used up even after going through deck after deck. So, how does its body keep from being eaten up by the acid - if it could exist. The answer is - it cannot exist. And if it could exist, what would it eat to get so much fluorine to make the powerful fluorine bonds that science says it needs to not being dissolved by its own acid?

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You realize your stomach acid is powerful enough to eat a hole in your skin right? It has a PH of 1-3 (the scale is 0-14, with 0 being the strongest, and 14 being the weakest). It's strong enough to dissolve bones and teeth given enough time. The reason it doesn't burn through your stomach is that your stomach lining is composed of epithileal cells produce a solution of mucus and bicarbonate that coats the inside of the stomach -- and the bicarbonate is a base that neutralizes stomach acid.

I would suppose that the alien's blood vessels would be lined with cells that do something like this, just better.

Honestly, I have a lot more problem with how, the space of mere hours, the xenomorph went from something the size of a bratwurst to something two meters tall and massing at least a hundred kilos. Quite apart from the insane growth rate, where did it get all that biomass to convert? Licking mildew off the pipes?

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That too.

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