Chilluminati Podcast - Midweek Mini: A Re-Discovered Color from Ancient Times?

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

This Minisode was originally uploaded with Episode 312: Untold Tales of LA with Brett Bayonne - some of the topics discussed might be outdated. Subscribe to our Patreon to listen and watch the Minisodes as they release every week! http://patreon.com/CHILLUMINATIPOD Mike Martin - http://www.youtube.com/@themoleculemindset Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - https://www.youtube.com/@StarWarsOldCanonBookClub/ Editor: DeanCutty Producer: Hilde @ https://bsky.app/profile/heksen.bsky.social Show Art: Studio Melectro @ http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro Logo Design: Shawn JPB @ https://twitter.com/JetpackBraggin Egyptian Blue: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-are-recreating-the-long-lost-recipe-for-egyptian-blue-the-worlds-oldest-known-synthetic-pigment-180986778/ Biological Qubit: https://pme.uchicago.edu/news/scientists-program-cells-create-biological-qubit-multidisciplinary-breakthrough

Notice! Notice! This midweek mini was recorded several months ago and may not be up to date with current events. For fresh minisode uploads with every episode, head to patreon.com slash Chaluminati pod. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Minnesota 2.30? Hey, yeah. That sounds right. Yeah, definitely.

That or 2.30, I think. Either one. Definitely, yeah. And welcome, Brett, to our Minnesota. We talk about weird news things. throughout the world and some reader stories and moan into the microphone every single time for over a hundred. Don't like that. Thank you for having me in this very special place.

Um, I, I, I feel like I've infiltrated a place. I'm not supposed to be. So thank you. You're in. You're through the, you're through the, you've out, you've broken out of your quantum, uh, route. Uh, huh. All right. So what do you got for us today?

Uh, Jesse. What do you have? Let's talk with you, Jesse. Well, I have a fun little tag. So a tail, sir. Yeah. A team of Washington State University engineers have successfully replicated a long-lost formula for a missing color

called Egyptian blue. It is the world's oldest synthetic pigment. And it is fascinating. I'm going to send you, boys, a link to what it looks like. A missing color. We haven't. It's 5,000 years old. It's just blue, though, right?

It is a very specific type of vibrant blue. Okay. Yeah, no, it is very vibrant, especially for an ancient pigment. Yeah. Yeah, you know, those ancient pigments were just not as good as modern ones. It was essentially a lost recipe.

They didn't know how to make it. And so what the WSU team decided to do was recreate it. And they mimicked 12 potential formulas to nail exactly what it was comprised of, and then subjected the mixtures to various temperatures and times to simulate ancient production conditions. And then through microscopic analysis,

the team compared the samples of what they had made with the samples of ancient artifacts to evaluate how close they were to the original formula. The interesting thing was they discovered multiple methods to reach the desired pigment. So I guess, really, if you were 5,000 years old in ancient Egypt, there were a few ways you could come up with how to actually make this, but basically the mix contains silicon dioxide, copper, calcium, and sodium carbonate.

And strangely enough, the interesting thing about this is that the dye emits light on an infrared spectrum, which could have applications in security and fingerprint analysis and detection and talking to aliens from inside your pyramid tombs so pretty interesting stuff it is a blue that we now can make again sorry hold on because i'm always fascinated like something like one of my like pet um interests is color and color theory and like the like the difference between you know like additive colors versus subtractive and so like i understand i've never heard of a dye or pigmentation or paint that is additive? Like it's always subtractive to me where like these are things that reflect light as opposed

to emitting light. You're saying there's something about this dust that has its own luminescence? On an infrared scale. Yeah. On the infrared spectrum, it emits light. That is so fucking see. Yeah. That's a, I wonder what part of it is doing that.

Great question. I mean, it's the mix of them, again, because they said, again, it's silicon dioxide, copper, calcium, and sodium carbonate, but they also heated it at different degrees and for different times. So they were talking about like 1,500 degrees. They're doing crazy temperatures. Oh. Well, yeah, if you lit my ass on fire, I'd be pretty bright too. Got it. But, but then they cool it.

You know what I mean? Like, it isn't. It gives it off when it's not hot. When it's not hot, it still glows. And so you can see in the image that I sent you that, like, there's a. blue that is in the dish, but then there's also the blue that's on the actual walls, and that's like a lighter different, I don't, it's, I would suspect maybe that it's really good at like, if you're walking through a dark place with a torch, it kind of makes it a little

brighter. I don't know. That's like the Jesse Cox, I don't have an answer thing, but like, yeah, you're right to ask the question. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but they said on the infrared scale, it, like, emits light. Well, look at like a lightning. Lightning bug or whatever they're called. Like, they have, like, bullshit that they, like, shit out that glows, right? That makes sense to me, though, as, like, a living, like, bioluminescence makes total sense to me. Right.

But, like, like, with chemical reactions. But it's, like, just dust emitting its own light is something I've never heard of before. But it's like, they made it, though, right? It's not just, like, naturally occurring dust. This is the, this is the, it is considered the oldest synthetic pigment. So it's not a natural thing. It was made and crafted. For sure.

But, but based on, like, the ingredient. that you told me like I wouldn't expect any combination of them any of them to be like and now it may close in the dark I just wouldn't have expected it in general I wouldn't expect yeah it's like what's crazy about this and I think this is fascinating that um there are numerous so this is it's called Egyptian blue because that's what we call it but if you go back and you look at ancient history there isn't blue like the ocean isn't blue the sky isn't blue blue wasn't a color it was some types of green

it was like there wasn't a blue like blue is a later thing in our vocabulary the way we describe thing that was blue we described it as a different type of green right and so I wonder what they would have called this yeah the blue the aliens gave us oh yeah I love that stuff it always comes up in the color theory stuff how somehow

completely separated and disparate societies tend to come up with color groupings and names for those groupings in the same orders. Like, for example, no one is going to come up with the color purple before they come up with white, black, and red. Yes. Yeah. Which makes sense logically, but it is kind of cool to think about. It's like really, uh, you have to build it.

Yeah. It's like, I guess unless there was like something, but you wouldn't, I don't know. You wouldn't conceive of it as a color that's different than the other color until you knew about the other colors. I think they conceive of it. It's just like, it's just that necessity is the, is the mother of invention. So like, you're going to need to differentiate between light and dark before you start getting into purple. You just, you're going to need to, you know. Like, you know, and that light and dark also works with things like yellow and orange or, you know, like, it's that.

Or three dudes. Brown, like, very close. three dudes standing there before we figured out about three and we're just like some dudes standing there and we're just like there are some there is a couple guys here that's for sure there are two and one there's a couple guys over here yeah not all many but there's some uh so let's do uh what do you got mathis I got some

quantum science you got an article okay so I'll do a story then you do an article and then we'll end with Brett because I me and Brett are going to do stories I put out a call for L.A. stories because this is the minisode that went with the L.A. stories episode if you're listening this much later, but it actually, like, prompted a bunch of people to just share regular listener stories, too. So I want to read a couple of those today. So I'm going to read one, and then Brett's going to read one. And this first one comes from Parasotia 12, and it's called My Glass moved by itself while playing Minecraft horror modpack.

okay hell yes okay cursed mod pack yeah okay so this is gonna sound pretty effing stupid but it just happened today and I wanted to share it if you want to use this on the pod that's fine I love you guys I also wanted to start off

that I am a Mathis not a Jesse because everybody on here always starts off saying I'm a Jesse so basically to be fair they do and they always immediately disprove that they're always like so there I was licking an alien's taint so basically I was playing a

Minecraft wore a mod pack from Modrent called Minecraft Backroom's found footage with my friend because it had been updated yesterday. So I'm going to just give you guys that really quick so you guys can check out the mod pack if you guys want to. There's the link. Link will be in the description at some point in the far future. Oh, it's back room stuff. Yeah.

We did this during the day, by the way, and my room was bright. For some reason, I always get super thirsty when I talk via voice chat and I had a now empty cup next to me. It happened when we were in the third level, the pool rooms. I swear to God, while playing, I look over to the cup, my leg's not touching the desk. It is on in any way and not touching it in any way, and the cup just starts to turn and move like a centimeter away from me by itself. After that happens, Minecraft closes itself. The mod pack we were playing had this voice chat mod, so we were talking via the game, not Discord, so my friend is gone. I rushed to this court and call him and tell him what happened.

We proceeded to just kind of shrug it off because really, what are you going to do and finish the mod pack? No, I was not on drugs. This happened in the middle of the day and I was really staring directly at the cup. It was also not wet under the cup in any way. It just moved and then that

was it. There goes my theory. I like that this kind of sounds like a bad old video game creepypasta, only incredibly lame like the cursed backrooms mod pack or something. I should add that I have been feeling kind of down lately. I've been meaning to come out to my brother as gay, but I got literally physically weak the last two times that came out to people and could only lie in bed the next day, although the

people I had told had been supportive. I would actually describe it as similar to actually catching a disease. The past few days, I've been pretty beside myself. So if you want to, this can add credence to the idea of bad energy or something. I don't really know that stuff, though. Or alternatively, you can say I've been in a bad state of mind, therefore more paranoid and prone to hallucinating something like a cup moving or have you thought that you moved it with your own mind yeah that's another question like poltergeist activity people always say maybe poltergeist are actually our own stressed out brains maybe you did it creating physical purchase pretty i was thinking that considering the game crashed after that their pc was just vibrating at a particular way that just

frequency up yeah just some low low frequency vibration or you low frequency vibrate from your brain and made the computer crash and move the cup maybe an egyptian die was emitting a glow that was only susceptible to infrared glass is that real is that real no everything could be real yeah but yeah it's true like i put my cell phone down on stuff sometimes and depending on the material when my phone vibrates like sometimes it'll like fucking go like across the the whole table and fall off or sometimes it won't even move at all it just has to do with sort of like the interaction between the materials and stuff it could have been that especially like brett was saying like you know some weird fan or something i you know i could i lend i lend credence to that as you

say um but yeah that's my that's my listener's story thank you for sharing mathis this next one is yours yeah uh so i've got a uh this drop literally this morning uh scientists were able to a biological protein, and for the very first time, turn it into a qubit, which is a quantum bit that is able to be within a superposition, which means in two states at one simultaneously. This is published in the nature for its study publication, which I'll pop it for here. Do you say meat? If you want.

I'm going to read the whole thing. Protein. I'm going to read the whole thing. So you see, it's pretty quick. The news article I'm reading here. Oh, where to go? Did I click off of it? It's still in the chat.

You got it right here. Nope, I got this. So this is, I'm reading the news article from physics.org. They say, you know, basically the difficulty here at first glance was biology and quantum technology are really incompatible.

Living systems in particular operate in warm, noisy environments that are full of constant motion. And with quantum technology, anytime anything interacts with it, bumping into it or whatever, it forces the quantum particle to stop being in superposition and choose a state. That's what decoherence is. That's what measurement is in the double slit experiment. Decoherence is interaction essentially. Because biology is filled with constant

interactions, it's very difficult. And they have not been able to do it until now to actually create a cubit and a biological scale. What they'd say is by quantum mechanics is the foundation of everything, including biological molecules. Now, researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, they have turned a protein found in living cells into a functioning quantum bit, qubit, which is the foundation of quantum technologies. The protein cubit can be used as a quantum sensor capable of detecting minute changes and ultimately offering unprecedented insight into biological processes.

Quote, rather than taking a conventional quantum sensor and trying to camouflage it, to enter a biological system, we wanted to explore the idea of using a biological system itself and developing it into a cubit. This is David Oshulam, the co-principle investigator of the project. He says, harnessing nature to create powerful families of quantum sensors, that's the new direction here. Unlike engineered nanomaterials, protein cubits can be built directly by cells, positioned with atomic precision, and detect signals thousands of times stronger than existing.

quantum sensors. What? Looking ahead, these protein qubits could be, could drive of a revolution in quantum-enabled nanoscale MRI, revealing the atomic structure of the cellular machinery and transforming our way of performing biological research altogether. Beyond biological, protein qubits could also open new frontiers for advancing quantum technology itself. Quote, our findings are not only, our findings not only enable new ways for quantum sensing

inside living systems, but also introduce a radically different approach. to designing quantum materials. Specifically, we can now start using nature's own tools of evolution and self-assembly to overcome some of the roadblocks faced by current spin-based quantum technologies. I feel like you're telling me how the world's going to end, but I don't understand that's how it feels, man. What was the thing that Microsoft did? They created a fourth state of matter in order to create a right, right. Just some simple chip, some fucking made up fantastic four bullshit.

super solid is what they call it. But that's not an organic compound. No, this is not. This is an organic. No, this is them taking something that's already organic, a protein that already exists, and then turning it into a qubit

within the living system. Because their difficulty is like, in order to operate on quantum systems, they need a sensor in there. And to get a sensor in a biological quantum state is like really hard. So they're like, what if we just take something

that's already in the biological system and turn it into a cube. bit sensor, which in the study, they say they can put into superposition, which means it's in multiple states simultaneously. It's my brain fractures at trying to understand this shit, but it does sound like... You know what a techno virus is? Yeah, like... This is what sounds like the beginning of what a techno virus is.

Yeah, yeah. You know, this is the first step, obviously. There were restrictions in how they do it, did it, and like they had a very controlled system and whatnot, but they were able to do it. it, which is the first step to now figuring out how to do it easier and easier and easier. And like they said, they can fuck with like evolutionary level stuff. I find that quite literally inconceivable, quite literally inconceivable. I'm going to drop the article I read from as well because they have a snapshot of like

the mathematical studies that you can look at and pretend to understand. Oh, yeah, like a picture of scientists. I like that. Yeah, no, scroll down. Oh, no, yeah. This is out. You see this? This makes me sleepy.

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the photophysics of the E-E-E-E-Y-F-P proteins. No, it's like literally squiggly lines touching, and I know it means something, but I can't figure it out. Every day we keep fucking with reality on its actual quantum, and it's quantum level.

It's Lex Luthor's shit. It's so scary. Yeah, I don't, yeah, exactly, there are more Lex Luthor's and there are no Superman's. So. Right. I don't know what we're going to, yeah, I don't know, but it, this drop this morning.

This is less than 24 hours old, kind of a news science drop yo new reality dropped new reality dropped everybody take it in existential crisis absolutely insane pay you rent tomorrow

here you go to close us out one more listener story from Brett that does that does teeter on the bounds of the edges of science

as we know it oh shit okay what do we have here this is okay somebody writing into you guys they say Hey, there, Chaluminati community.

I'm a fairly new listener and wanted to share an experience I had in late 2018. In parentheses, I give complete permission to use this on the podcast, if deemed interesting enough. They say, in complete transparency, I have no one to corroborate my story as I was at work alone. My usual relief called out sick, and my boss had taken the day off to go larping. Maybe his boss was Mathis. Hell yes. During my shift around Noonish, a black car pulls up in front of the shop. parking in the fire lane.

As I was heading out to ask him to move, he jumped out and came into my store. I greeted him and asked him if he needed help finding anything. For context, I worked at a popular video game retailer. You know the one. The only one. Babbage's. Yeah. E.B. Games.

Yeah. E.B. Games challenge everything. My question seemed to go in one ear and out the other, as the guy kept looking around, clearly confused. I asked if he was all right, to which he shook off the infusion, smiled, and nodded. Then he asked me a question that makes this memory stick so clearly. What is this place?

I never had to explain what my store was before. So after finding the words, I tried my best. We sell video games mostly, sometimes figures and other collectibles. Have we never been in one of our stores before? The guy seemed utterly lost. He walked around silently for a few minutes, and I kept my distance, but I watched him. He recognized some things, but not many. He came back up to the counter and thanked me for letting him look around.

I kept a casual smiling and saying something long lines of, Hey, no problem, man. He then hit me with another question. Hey, how do I get to Meadow Glen Mall from here? I accidentally let out a laugh and the guy looked genuinely confused again. Oh, you're serious. Sorry, Meadow Glen Mall was demolished two years ago, sir. I think there's like a Wegman's there now.

the news hit him like a ton of bricks he took out some papers flip through them quickly and then shoved them back in his pocket oh all right uh where is the closest travel agency at this point i was getting a bit weirded out there had been one in the area but it closed many years prior back when i was a kid i told him this and he got very nervous oh oh okay thanks he said and left without another word he hopped in the black car started it up and took off specifically turning right, which led to a U-Haul storage facility with no exit other than turning around. I went out to flag him down and tell him there was no exit that way, but when I got around the corner, there was no car or any sign of the car.

That's wild. On the way back to the store, the owner of the deli next door, stopped me and asked me if I knew who owned that car. I told him he was just in the store, but I didn't know him personally. The store owner told me he wanted to talk to that guy. guy, since he drove one of his dream cars in 87 Buick Grand National GNX. After looking at it up years later, I confirmed it was, in fact, the car. I asked him if he was sure since the car looked pretty new.

I'd know that car anywhere, kid, an absolute beauty. He went back into the deli, and I returned to the store where I finished my shift, trying to figure out what happened. The only distraction was an increase in police patrols near our store, which I'm not sure was related, but the timing was weird. I got home and I told my girlfriend about the encounter over dinner, which led her to ask me, did you mean a time traveler? I stopped mid-chew processing the question.

To this day, I still believe the guy I met was a time traveler. Or he could have just gotten out of prison and kept his car in a storage unit. That's awesome. Yeah, maybe a paint level guy. This person closes by saying, I honestly don't know, but I figured it would be a fun encounter to tell you all. pretty good I love that I

I like the could have just gotten out of prison vibe but for some reason the first thing I thought of was oh

his time capsule was in the storage unit and he just woke up got in his car and was like I gotta find

this mall you know like time travelers do oh man I can't believe I've been asleep for so many

decades I gotta know does Sabarro still do like the double pizza like the two pizzas one on top

of the other pizza. I've never seen anything like it. I love that. Uh, this is a very, this is a very well written tale. I want it to be real. It's much more cinematic than the one that we were doing, right? Yeah, very, very cinematic. I want it to be real. I'm trying to think of things this could be. To be completely honest, man, I, this, I hear this story and I go, ah, I'm upset that I didn't think to pull this prank on someone. It's pretty good. That's another weird guy in L.A. story, but this one's not even in L.A.

Yeah. This is actually, I know where this is. This is in Massachusetts. I've been to that mall before. Oh. Before it was torn down. It is a Wegmans now. That's so like, this is so good. Like, we got to,

we got to do this to somebody. Do you think that guy would have been happier with the Wegmans? I don't know, man. You know, there's food court in there. You can sit down. some good food? If it's a time, I look at the side of it's like, if he's a time traveler, it's probably, I love the idea of like, you know, space and time is not really like what

we think it is. He probably didn't really want a time travel. There might just been like a weird slip in like quantum mechanics where things sat on top of each other for a second. Like the Nick Cage movie Drive Angry where he comes out of a portal from hell in his, in his hot rod, his car, yeah. What decade do you think you could do, realistically? Like, what, what, what decade where you could live? I mean like, okay, if we're pranking somebody right like if we're if we're pranking somebody as a time traveler what decade do you think you could believably be from uh the 80s easy you think yeah yeah i could i mean yeah any decade from the 80s on i could probably pull off sure honestly i could probably pull off a dude from the 60s

in 70s too yeah i don't think i could do i think that the biggest challenge would be convincing somebody who was there that I was there you know like convincing like yes you're right I what when I answered your question I was thinking of a rather young man like a game stop person exactly yeah but if I had to convince like my uncle

that I come from the 60s he'd like shut up can you get me a beer you know yeah you don't sound like you're from the 60s you idiot I could probably pretend to be a nerd say that all I know is science and D&D and people would believe me yeah

that's not crazy I could probably get back in the 80s and just be like I can play guitar and that's enough because there's not a lot of video games I think the most potent way to pull this off would be if we outsourced this and tried to find

you know those okay we had them in high school they're around you know those people that like they go to like sock hops and they like they go swing dancing all the time yeah yeah they like that's their thing like they just dress up and go to Disneyland yeah yeah yes yes like if we found one of those guys

who's all about that life you're like hey man you want to like bust a prank with us oh they would love it I think they could pull it off pretty funny pretty genuinely a pretty funny idea like you got the outfit you do like Indiana Jones type look probably you could probably find that guy too pretty hilarious brought him to the time traveler shop in california echo park time traveler mart uh or marvista time traveler mart 826 la support it it's writing for children. It teaches them how to write good. Brett, thank you so much again for joining us on another little portion of our show. It's been a fun LA month and it's great to finally have you on the show, man. This was very confusing. Why did you ask me to do this? Don't worry about it.

We'll see you next time, bud. Yeah. Sounds good. Thank you guys. Yeah. Thanks guys. See you guys. We love you. Bye. Bye.