I have regular very vivid weird dreams. Last night's wasn't weird as such (compared to my usual freaky ones) but threw me as I knew something in the dream that my conscious mind has no clue about.
In my dream my husband was some kind of mad scientist (he is a project director in real life!) and had worked out a way to create artificial mercury. In the dream his uncle (he hasn't got an uncle in real life) persuaded him to show him how to make it but I realised that his uncle was only interested in stealing the idea as he was trying to make artificial magnesium as a component in a bomb he was trying to create. So my OH goes off to Paris and then I have to rescue him as I realise his uncle is working with terrorists to create this artificial bomb with his new mercury invention. I woke up as I was trying to remove bricks at the back of a huge warehouse which had been filled with water to drown H.
Clearly some of the dream was influenced by the awful news from Paris and is not all chemically perfect - but how did my subconscious know that magnesium could be used in a bomb and even more that mercury is a component of magnesium when my conscious mind has no clue. I stopped chemistry at age of 14 and have not shown any interest in it since. Who knows - I could be a genius in my sleep?!