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this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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Asklemmy
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Actually because of the density you wont be able to sink more than about 1/6th of your body into it.
I feel like this is worth uploading to Lemmy. It's an image, apparently from October 1972's National Geographic, of a Spanish miner floating on mercury:
It's denser than lead, so he's just sitting on the top of it like a block of styrofoam would on water. The effect of gallium would not be quite so pronounced, but same idea. This is also why you can't really drown in quicksand unless you work at it (which, if you completely panic, isn't impossible).
Meanwhile, you sink straight to the bottom in anything like oil, with no hope of swimming.
So, if you laid on a large enough block of it, you'd have the perfect shape to make a mold for a customized foam mattress?
I suspect there's an easier choice, if a dense bed is all you need. Every liter of the stuff goes for 872 USD as of 2019. And that's not even bad, considering how rare it is and how great the semiconductors you can make with it are. It's neighbor germanium is another digit up.
Edit: Wow, somebody already linked this exact thing elsewhere.