[jaggederest]

My understanding of mechanisms from a chemistry perspective is that the anesthetics mess with the phospholipid bilayer making up the cell membrane in a way that closes off receptors. So it makes intuitive sense that dissolving giant xenon molecules in a layer could mess with it from a pure physical perspective. What's weird, to my mind, is that other noble gases don't have any effect - you'd expect a gradient.

[shawnz]

Other noble gases can also produce anesthesia, they just aren't as effective and so require pressures above atmospheric pressure for it to work. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhalational_anesthetic#Hype...

[tbrownaw]

Xenon Hexafluoride is a thing. So it's only mostly non-reactive, and the effects don't necessarily have to be strictly from physical bulk.

Apparently Krypton and Radon are slightly reactive as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas_compound

[thfuran]

Getting something to react with fluorine mostly just proves that it exists.