[robthebrew]

There is an interesting story (only slightly relevant) about glycerine. It was a pure liquid, held in many labs throughout the world. Until for some reason it crystallised in one lab. Wishing a short amount of time all the world's samples crystallised.

[mrob]

Sounds similar to the real-life case of ritonavir:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritonavir#Polymorphism_and_tem...

[gumgumpost]

Isn't that somewhat similar to prions? I mean I know they're different things but one triggering the other to change shape? Don't know if prions also fall in some sort of lower energy well.

[bradyd]

Veritasium just did a video on this.

https://youtu.be/ksn5yrsC3Wg

[danparsonson]

Also less recently Asianometry: https://youtu.be/_xPhxtuA_Qc

[tcskeptic]

Just to be clear -- this story is fictional, it did not happen in real life. It has become a bit of an urban legend because of a video game but does not have a basis in fact.

[gwern]

Source for it being fictional? The original 1960 source describes it as extremely nonfictional: https://gwern.net/doc/fiction/science-fiction/1960-analog-oc...

[gjm11]

It also, unsurprisingly, tells a slightly different and less startling story: it's not that glycerine crystallized in one lab and suddenly others around the world had the same problem, it's that glycerine hadn't been crystallizing in one lab but once the lab was sent a sample of crystallized glycerine the stuff always did crystallize there, presumably (assuming the story's true) because of some sort of tiny particles (whether of glycerine or of something else) that float about in the air or adhere to glassware and encourage glycerine to crystallize.

[harperlee]

Interesting! Could you expand?

[wduquette]

Obligatory reference to Ice-9 in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle: a form of water ice that freezes at a high temperature.