Also: are the most conducive
- oxygen
- hydrogen
- nitrogen
- carbon
I mean, you could start almost at the very top.
Skip hydrogen which is an obvious need and we’re right at something that’s not particularly helpful with either the creation or the sustenance of life. Helium has advanced use in MRI machines, and is fun in party balloons and squeaky voice tricks, but we got by for millennia without any of that. Relatively harmless otherwise, but not necessary.
Lithium? It does find itself in biological places often in place of more important things like sodium or potassium, but it’s neither necessary nor completely worthless, I guess.
My vote, though, for the worst of the top of the periodic table: Beryllium. Toxic. No biological function except to cause problems. Helps make pretty crystals, but the same is true of lots of less harmful elements. In that sense then, completely worthless.
Arsenic.
Source: I watched Evolution.
Arsenic helped a lot of people before divorce was common
Wait, how?
Did people give each other arsenic offerings as an expression of wanting to divorce like marriage bread is to marriage?
No I was making a lighthearted quip about poisoning one’s abusive husband
Lead’s gotta be up there in terms of net negative impact on us as a whole.
Definitely in the lead [whacky races cat wheezing laugh]
Neon
All the noble gases imo.
Most of the heavy metals (yes, that includes the radioactive ones)
Polonium is definitely near the top of the list.
All the radioactive ones maybe?
I forgot almost immediately that I asked for worthless lol
My question is genuine though, I’m not biophysics expert, I know there are radioactive elements in our body, but are they worthless? Probably the least meaningful to sustaining life would be least reactive elements if that makes sence, but life is more about energy of chemical reactions between molecules, not individual elements
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Gold? I don’t think any life uses it for sustenance outside of technological and sociological applications.
