HI, all. Great to meet you. I'm searching for a sci-fi short story I read about 15 years ago. I found it online, but I'm pretty sure the short story itself was much older (my hunch is the 70s, maybe, but I am not at all certain about that).
From what I can recall, the plot goes like this: out of the blue, a pair of scientists scanning the heavens begin to receive a message from a distant star. At first, the scientists struggle to decode the message, until they realize that it isn't language or even math but chemical formulas. As they examine the message further, the scientists realize that the senders are actually using chemistry to tell us about their history. For example, the first formula is for the combustion of plant matter (in other words, the discovery of fire) followed by formulas suggesting bronze, iron smelting, and coal burning (industrial revolution) and so on. The scientists are getting really excited but then the next set of formulas arrive, and it's things like gunpowder and, eventually, nuclear fission--uncontrolled nuclear fission--which is repeated over and over again several times, signifying multiple nuclear wars. Then follows a set of increasingly complicated formulas that the scientists do not recognize, culminating in a single formula that they sense must be for something truly terrible. Not long afterwards, the distant star explodes violently. The shocked, saddened scientists consider what they have just experienced, and speculate that perhaps the message-senders were also scientists, not so very different from themselves, who knew their world was about to die and sent out their message in hopes of reaching someone, anyone, and sharing their story as a plea to others not to make the same mistakes.
The story has really stuck with me, and I wish so much that I could find it again. The use of chemistry makes me wonder if it might not be by Asimov, but I've looked through a list of his short-stories and nothing jumped out at me. I've also tried various Google searches but all those turn up is things like articles on the real-world history of chemistry, or actual nuclear fission, not results about short-stories containing references to chemistry or fission.
Any help would be appreciated! Thank you so much in advance.
From what I can recall, the plot goes like this: out of the blue, a pair of scientists scanning the heavens begin to receive a message from a distant star. At first, the scientists struggle to decode the message, until they realize that it isn't language or even math but chemical formulas. As they examine the message further, the scientists realize that the senders are actually using chemistry to tell us about their history. For example, the first formula is for the combustion of plant matter (in other words, the discovery of fire) followed by formulas suggesting bronze, iron smelting, and coal burning (industrial revolution) and so on. The scientists are getting really excited but then the next set of formulas arrive, and it's things like gunpowder and, eventually, nuclear fission--uncontrolled nuclear fission--which is repeated over and over again several times, signifying multiple nuclear wars. Then follows a set of increasingly complicated formulas that the scientists do not recognize, culminating in a single formula that they sense must be for something truly terrible. Not long afterwards, the distant star explodes violently. The shocked, saddened scientists consider what they have just experienced, and speculate that perhaps the message-senders were also scientists, not so very different from themselves, who knew their world was about to die and sent out their message in hopes of reaching someone, anyone, and sharing their story as a plea to others not to make the same mistakes.
The story has really stuck with me, and I wish so much that I could find it again. The use of chemistry makes me wonder if it might not be by Asimov, but I've looked through a list of his short-stories and nothing jumped out at me. I've also tried various Google searches but all those turn up is things like articles on the real-world history of chemistry, or actual nuclear fission, not results about short-stories containing references to chemistry or fission.
Any help would be appreciated! Thank you so much in advance.
