Scientists figure out how to unboil an egg

Maybe there is hope after all for finding one’s virginity! According to a recent report in Popular Science, researchers at the University of California Irvine have devised a technique for unboiling an egg.

The explanation sounds relatively simple:

When you boil an egg, the heat causes the proteins inside the egg white to tangle and clump together, solidifying it. New research … shows how [chemists] can essentially reverse the clumping process by adding chemicals to a cooked egg.

[…]

And they didn’t just go for a standard 10-minute hard boiled egg. No, the researchers decided, just to make absolutely sure the whites were cooked, to boil the eggs for 20 minutes at 194 degrees Fahrenheit. Adding urea [one of the main ingredients in pee] to the eggs untangled the knotted proteins by chemically breaking them into bits, returning the eggs to a liquid form….  Then the researcher put the (now liquid) solution into a machine called a ‘vortex fluid device.’ The device pieces the broken proteins back together within minutes — a vast improvement over older methods of reconstituting proteins, which could take days.

There is no mention in the article of what the experiment cost and whether taxpayer money was used. Nor is there word on what future endeavors scientists hope to undo, though if unchopping a tree is on their agenda, they should be aware that poet-parable writer W. S. Merwin figured this one out some time ago.

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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