Astrophysicist Rachel Paterno-Mahler recently noticed that a TikTok video she’d posted back in January was suddenly picking up hundreds of thousands of views.
The video was about the gas found in galaxy clusters, which is a fascinating topic: this dense and hot material emits X-ray frequencies, which scientists using NASA’s orbital Chandra telescope have been using to estimate how dark matter might be distributed in the cosmos.
At first, Paterno-Mahler was delighted to see the video take off. “I was really surprised when all of a sudden I started getting all these notifications,” she told us — until, that is, she figured out why it was blowing up.
“TikTok,” one netizen warned on the video, “this is not the right galaxy gas.”
Alas, the TikTok’s virality wasn’t due to explosive new public interest in the astrophysics of galaxies. Instead, it was because of kids looking to get high by huffing nitrous oxide, a popular drug currently being marketed by a company called Galaxy Gas — and mistakenly landing on Paterno-Mahler’s video.
“All these people are trying to find, like, videos of people huffing nitrous oxide,” Paterno-Mahler said with a laugh, “and they’re getting a lecture on galaxy clusters.”
Also known as laughing gas or whippets, nitrous oxide has a range of applications: it’s used as an anesthetic by surgeons and dentists, as a propellant in rocket fuel, and even to power cans of whipped cream.
But it’s also a common recreational drug that causes a brief head rush when inhaled, and it’s easy to buy from winking sellers like Galaxy Gas, whose “whipped cream chargers” are decorated in psychedelic color schemes and feature vape-like flavors like “watermelon lemonade” and “blue raspberry.”
Online, there’s no question about what the product is really meant for.
“This gas is killing my son,” wrote one person in a recent Reddit thread about Galaxy Gas. “It makes him talk to himself and makes him violent. Please please do not inhale this mess.”
As The New York Times detailed back in 2021, nitrous — also known as “whippets” or “laughing gas” — has been a niche vice for decades. Members of the Grateful Dead were avid users; a famous photo of a Halloween bash at Studio 54 depicts 1970s partiers hooked up to nitrous oxide tanks through gas masks; Stephen “Steve-O” Glover, of “Jackass” fame, says he used to go through up to 600 whippet vials per day during the height of his addiction. And who could forget the dodgy allegations that disgraced rapper Kanye “Ye” West is on the substance as well?
Most recently, nitrous has also been blowing up on TikTok as a wave of very young-looking kids inhale Galaxy Gas on camera, often leveraging the substance’s side effect of suddenly making your voice deep for comedic effect. TikTok searches for terms like “galaxy gas,” “galaxy gas review,” and “trying galaxy gas” return a wild number of videos that have collectively raked in untold millions of views.
We should also point out that nitrous can be fairly horrible for your health. Using it frequently can cause a brutal B12 deficiency that’s been linked to neurological and hematological damage, it can kill you from asphyxiation, and it can be a stepping stone to even more gruesome inhalants.
On a certain level, the whole thing feels like a cruel joke about a vulgar and broken internet. Kids are going online and seeing dangerous drug behavior get memed and glamorized with no warning about the hazards, while companies like Galaxy Gas are cashing in with no consequence.
It also feels unfair that Paterno-Mahler is an accomplished scientist — she’s held several professorships, not to mention scoring a prestigious “Jeopardy!” win — but she says the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic collided with the “gauntlet” of finding a permanent position in academia. She wound up taking a step back from the field she loves for an engineering job instead, although still yearned for the poetry of stars and galaxies.
“I missed talking about astronomy,” said Paterno-Mahler. “I don’t do a lot of it these days.”
The TikTok videos were a way to stay connected — and potentially, she says, as a way to explore a return to teaching.
She never expected one of them to go viral, and though she maintains a good sense of humor about why one finally did, she does wish there was a way to encourage more people to appreciate the grandeur of the cosmos.
“Galaxy clusters are so interesting. They have very similar dark matter composition to the entire universe,” Paterno-Mahler said. “You know what’s going on inside of them just by studying this gas,” she added, “and there’s a lot of really cool, interesting stuff we can learn from it.”
It’s also a shame because as NASA faces down the barrel of massive proposed budget cuts, its groundbreaking Chandra X-ray telescope — crucial for studying the type of galaxy gas Paterno-Mahler was talking about in the video — has been on the chopping block, forcing the observatory to grapple with financial cutbacks.
What’s more, Paterno-Mahler points out, battling for grants and research funding isn’t just a Chandra issue. It’s a constant fight throughout the niches of astrophysics, which is a crucial field for learning about the universe, but one with little promise of financial return.
“You feel like you constantly have to justify why you’re interested in space,” she said. “Nobody wants to fund private astronomy research — you can’t get a lot of money out of understanding why galaxy clusters merge.”
Maybe the situation is an opportunity for NASA and science communicators to capitalize on Galaxy Gas’ popularity. Imagine if they took advantage of the algorithm and flooded TikTok with educational clips about actual galaxy gas — and ended up sparking a love of astrophysics among some impressionable young people.
Or then again, maybe not.
“So how do they collect it in canisters?” pondered one viewer on Paterno-Mahler’s galaxy gas video.
