September 19, 2019 • 45 mins
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the most powerful artifact in J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy series and how it relates to real-life metallurgy.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
H three rings for Elvin King's Under the Sky, seven
for the dwarf lords in their halls of Stone, nine
for mortal men doomed to die, and one for the
Dark Lord on his dark throne in the Land of Mordor,
where the shadows lie. One ring to rule them all,
(00:23):
wondering to find them, one ring to bring them all,
and in the darkness bind them in the Land of Mordor,
where the Shadows lie. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:49):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and nerd Alert. We're
doing a Tolkien episode today. That's right, of course. The
cold open there was from J. R. Tolkien's The Lord
of the Rings, which was written in stages between ninety
seven and nineteen forty nine. I imagine everyone listening to
this is familiar with the Lord of the Rings. Uh, yeah,
(01:11):
pretty much. I mean we we'll try to make it
fun even if you're not. But yeah, Robert, you got
bit by the Lord of the Rings bug this week apparently,
and you wanted to talk about the One Ring of Power.
See if there's any way we could give it the
stuff to blow your mind treatment. Yeah, yeah, I've been
thinking a lot about Tolkien recently, I mean until obviously.
You know, I read Tolkien when I was younger. I
watched the movies when they came out, I watched the
(01:32):
animated films when when they were around, and uh, and
then I kind of took a break, and then I
came back and read The Hobbit to my son. Eventually,
I hope to read The Lord of the Rings to him.
Uh wait, when did the classic quote? You were reading
it to him at some point, weren't you when he said,
is it the Lord of the Rings yet? Yeah? Yeah,
he kind of got a little bored with the opening,
(01:53):
but at this point, like he's, yeah, he's super into
Harry Potter. I think he's pretty much ready for the
Lord of the Rings. But you know, the Hobbit is
better for younger readers as well. But it got me
thinking a lot about the Ring. Uh. And it's it's nature,
it's powers, and and also it is the task of
applying real world science to the One Ring and seeing
(02:14):
what we could potentially figure out. It'll have to be
a little bit of loosey goosey real world science. But
we'll do our best because obviously the one ring, the
Ring of Power, is an object of intense magical power
in the books, created by an intensely magical being in
an intensely magical fantasy world. And so our intent here
(02:36):
is not to you know, to cheapen all of that
or anything, or to or to myth busted or anything
like that, but you know, just to engage in the
fun exercise of saying, okay, okay, if if we had
to make this work with science, what would the ring
be made out of? What are the the you know,
what are the constraints involved that sort of thing. Now,
the Ring of Power in Lord of the Rings has
(02:57):
got to be one of the like ultimate ex examples
of a fantasy mcguffin. You know, an object that that
a plot can be built around that. There are a
lot of these story you end up with, like you know,
Wore Cruxes and Harry Potter and uh, there's very often
it's just convenient from a storytelling perspective to have a
magical object that must be uh, that must be managed,
(03:19):
and the logistics of which become the struggle for the
characters in the story. But the ring I think also
represents more than that. It's an interesting object in itself
because of its properties that to some people who own
it or where it, it confers these powers. And we
can discuss what the powers are alluded to be in
the story, uh in a minute. But also it has
(03:40):
this corrupting influence. So it actually I think does have
a kind of thematic commentary on the way that like
possessing great power has the tendency to corrupt people's motives
and way of seeing the world. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean
even even today, like certainly throughout human history, we can
look to the like the symbolic power of the um
(04:01):
like rings are used to to signify, you know, bonds
that have been made, social bonds, marriages, uh. They they
have long symbolized power or or wealth. The seal ring
that might be used as a stamp in wax to
show you the sigil of your authority. Right now, of course,
(04:21):
there's the super Bowl ring, right which and I mean
really it is as silly as the super Bowl ring
may be, it is it is you know, it is
drawing from this lineage of the ring as the symbol
of of power and accomplishment. And so yeah, I mean
all that's wrapped up in the myth of the Ring
as well, you know, not even to get into some
of the various things that Tolkien was drawing on, you know,
(04:43):
the Ring cycle of etcetera. Another token note I want
to make is I do want to drive home. Even
though Joe and I are both uh, you know, quite
familiar with token, neither of us are like Tolken experts.
Please don't come swinging your sword at us because we
left out some Tolkien d right, I mean it's happened before. Uh.
And and likewise we may not hit all the Tolkien
(05:05):
pronunciations in this. Uh, I can't wait, But but we're
gonna give it a shot. So first of all, let
me just run through the history of the One Ring
for everyone, okay, so that we can you know, fully
appreciate it. Here. So you're going beyond the Lord of
the Rings. You're going into the like the deep lore. Yes, yeah,
and uh and I cobbled this together from from from
(05:28):
rereading some segments of Tolkien's original work, but also from
rereading of segments from the Tolkien Encyclopedia, which is an
excellent book that came out I believe in like the
the nineties, I still have a copy of wonderful illustrations
throughout uh and uh So, anyway, without further ado, let
me tell you about the One Ring. So, the One
(05:50):
Ring was forged in the year sixteen hundred of the
second Age of the Sun by Sauron, forged within the
active volcano Mount Doom in the land of World War
So Saron was a former Maya spirit who served the
dark Lord Melkorp, who was defeated at the end of
the First Age of the Sun. And so then Saron,
(06:12):
in the guise of an atter, the giver of gifts,
he seduces the Alvin Smith's into forging the rings of power.
Uh these are the rings that from our opening reading
three rings for the Elvin King, seven for the dwarves,
nine for men, and you know, so that these may
be distributed among you know, the various intelligent species of
(06:34):
of the of the of the world. But then he
goes and he forges the one ring himself, the ring
that's going to control all of these rings, and and
also crackles with other powers will discuss. So it's a trick,
it's a trap. He's this godlike being who wants to
control the people's of Middle Earth, the elves, the dwarves,
(06:55):
the humans, and so he gives them these things that
are ostensibly like weapons or or sort of magical items
of power that allow them to increase their power and
dominance over the world. And once all, once all of
those people put the rings on and assume the power
for themselves, then he unlocks the trapdoor in the back
(07:15):
of the code, which is that he's got wondering that
gives him power over all the other people who are
wearing them exactly. Yeah, And and he take ends up
sort of taking various guys is the idea into different
forms throughout his history, you know, from the end the deceiver,
to the trickster, to the to the war lord, to
the seeker. So his fair form is destroyed in the
(07:37):
Fall of New Maniore and he arises again as this
dark lord in black armor. This is the one that
anyone who's even just set down to watch The Lord
of the Rings films probably remembers from the prologue. So
even if you only made it ten minutes in, you
saw this part. He saw the dark Lord in his armor.
But this too, this form too was destroyed at the
end of the Second Age of the Sun, and the
(07:58):
Ring was lost. But Saron did not perish because the
One Ring still existed, and his fate is bound to it. Um.
Even if you're more familiar with Harry Potter than Lord
of the Rings, you can think of the One Ring
is like is the horcrux, the single horcrux for Soron,
I suppose so in his in his reincarnated form, without
(08:19):
a body, he depends on this ring, or else he
cannot survive. Right. And so in the year one thousand
of the Third Age of the Sun, he rises again
as the Great Littless Eye Uh, seeking the Ring, waging
the War of the Ring. But his adversaries have found
it first, and they've hatched a plan to destroy it
(08:40):
by the only known means, casting it back into the
volcanic fires from which it was forged. Okay, so there
you've got the setting of the Lord of the Rings.
So you've got to take this ring back into enemy
territory to throw it into a volcano, which is the
only way it can be destroyed, the only way to
destroy this great enemy, God's sorcerer thing. Um. Now we
(09:02):
there are scenes in the movies, and I'm trying to
recall there in the book too. I mean we're like,
for example, Gimli the Dwarf played by John Ree Davies
and the Peter Jackson movies. Uh that you know, they're
getting the speech about how the Ring must be destroyed
in order to defeat Sauron. So he just whips out
his axe and he's like, all right, let's bust it.
And so he just swings his ax at the at
(09:23):
the ring. But it doesn't work right. He instead, I
think his ax breaks on it when he tries to
cleave the ring with it. So the ring is uh
portrayed as something that is completely indestructible except in the
fires of the volcano where it was forged. Yeah, there's
a there's a great passage in the Fellowship of the
Ring where Gandolf explains all this to Frodo after it's
(09:44):
been cast into the fireplace once and Frodo has has
tried to will himself to throw it once more into
the deepest part of the fire, but cannot, and so
Gandalf says the following, But as for breaking the ring,
force is useless, even if you took it and struck
it with a heavy sledge hammer. It would make no
dnt in it. It cannot be unmade by your hands
(10:06):
or by mine. Your small fire, of course, would not
melt even ordinary gold. This ring has already passed through
it unscathed and even unheeded. But there is no smith's
forge in this shire that could change it at all.
Not even the anvils and furnaces of the dwarves could
do that. It has been said that dragon fire could
melt and consume the rings of Power, but there is
(10:28):
not now any dragon left on Earth in which the
old fire is hot enough, Nor was there ever any dragon,
not even on Kalaghan the Black, who could have harmed
the one ring, the ruling Ring, for that was made
by Saron himself. There is only one way to find
the cracks of Doom in the depths of Oro Dron
(10:49):
the Fire Mountain, and cast the ring in there, if
you really wish to destroy it, to put it beyond
the grasp of the enemy forever. Thus spoke Gandalf, and
off knew what he was talking about. By the way,
I've always thought Syrian McKellen made a great Gandalf, But
I do have a strong attachment to John Houston's Gandolf
in the nineteen seventy seven animated version in the nineteen
(11:11):
eighties Return of the King. Um, so that you know
that that was the token of of my childhood, and
so so I was trying to summon a little John
Houston flavor there my limited ability to do so, the
ones that make saw Rouman in the Santa Claus like
his red robes. Um. You know, I I haven't rewatched
the Return of the King in a while, but but
(11:33):
I have rewatched the Hobbit at that it held up
pretty well. You know. Oh, I totally agree that Ian
mckelen is a great Gandalf. In fact, I would say
that even if you don't like the movies for any
other reason, the Peter Jackson films are great just for
Ian McKellen's performance. Oh yeah, And I mean Christopher Lee.
It's it's got a wonderful oh Christopher Lee. Of course
that goes without saying. Uh So another note on the ring,
(11:55):
just real quick. Not that it's very important to what
we're going to be talking about from to the episode,
but what happens when you wear the ring? Oh yeah,
I was actually trying to figure this out, even though
I know the story. I was last night, I was googling, like,
what does the Ring actually do you know, other than
we know it confers this kind of vague power, But
it actually does have some specified powers in the mythology.
(12:19):
I mean the big one of course, and this is
the one that comes up in the Hobbit as well,
is that when you put it on, you become invisible
to most creatures, though at the same time you become
highly visible to certain other beings, namely the Ring wraiths,
um and uh and saw On himself. But it's like
allows you to sort of shift into another plane of
(12:40):
existence and then doing so, become invisible. But I think
that's only for some creatures who wear it, right, Um,
I mean the making them invisible? Right, Yeah, I mean
it's I don't think it's it's implied that when saw
On himself wears that he is invisible. But then again,
it's a different matter when you know the dark Lord
(13:02):
himself wears the Ring as opposed to win a mortal
wears the Ring. Oh, and I guess another thing to
specifies that the Wonder Ring, the powers of the Wondering
maybe greater or different uh than the powers of the
other rings that were given off to the to the
kings of the Mortals and the elves. Yes, yeah, it
is the it is the great ring. It is the
one that the Master himself forged. Um. And you know,
(13:25):
one note again about the sort of the origins of
sro On is that in his like previous life, you know,
as like an unfallen entity, as one of these Maya spirits,
he originally served the the ann or forge god a
Uli if I'm saying that right, who is you know,
a god of the forge like a Festus. So you
(13:47):
know he would have had, you know, presumably had access
to all knowledge of metallurgy and uh and metal making
and crafting in general. Yeah, well, maybe we should take
a break and then when we come back we can
explore some questions about what the Ring of Power could
possibly be made of. All right, we're back, so you
(14:11):
know we're gonna again. We're gonna cherry pick a little
bit here. This is not going to be, you know,
a perfect dissection of everything. I don't think Tolkien was
going for hard sci fi and wanted him to, you know,
I mean, oh my god, wait, no, that's a brilliant idea.
So we've had various rewrites of Lord of the Rings. Uh.
You know, there is the rewrite of the story that
(14:32):
tells it from more Door's perspective that casts like Gandalf
and the Elves as as the villains and says, actually,
more Door is just a you know, it's just a
region of people who are trying to develop industrial technology
and they're being oppressed by these you know, ancient kingdoms
of magic users and they're fighting back. So that that's
like that, which is a wonderful treatment idea. I haven't
(14:54):
read it, but it's a wonderful idea because you see
that in plenty of like in plenty of myths and
and stories of old where he's got one side is
is cast as the heroes, the other side as the
demonic other, and the reality is is, you know, is
something different than that. There's something more balanced probably yeah,
uh so, so yeah, there's like that take. But here's
(15:15):
the take I want now, like the Arthur C. Clark
version of Whatever to the Rings that tries to tell
the same story but just imagines everything is like totally
mundane physics and chemistry and and how all that has achieved.
All right, well, well let's get into I guess some
of the chemistry here. Um, So let's just start by
(15:36):
talking about things you could throw a ring into in
an attempt to melt it. Okay, So, so to refresh again,
you've got this ring of power. You need to destroy
it to defeat the bad guy. But you can't just
throw it in a regular fire. The heroes can't do
anything about it except take it back to the volcano
where it was made. That's the only thing that will
destroy it. In terms of fire sources, Gandal says, fireplace
(15:59):
isn't gonna cut it, dwarf and furnace isn't gonna cut it.
Only the volcano can can cut it. So let's talk
about the temperatures involved here. So, Uh, first of all,
let's take the Hobbits fireplace. If you look for a
you know, you look at a maximum open wood fireplace temperature. Um.
I was looking around for sources on this. I found
a few different different ones that that more or less matchup.
(16:21):
Hearth dot com, which indeed is a place for people
who are just into fireplaces to talk about fireplaces. Uh.
They have like a message board. It definitely it's a
full message board, but it lists it lists an average
fireplaces being somewhere between uh one thousand, two hundred degrees
to dred degrees fahrenheit. I've also seen it as high
(16:44):
as sixteen hundred um again for the hottest part of
the fire, where Frodo never actually throws it because the
will of the Ring prevents it. Uh And as far
as Celsius, we'd be talking a range of roughly what's
six degrees And to clarify there, I guess this doesn't
really matter for the episode. But that's another thing about
(17:04):
the Ring is that the wing, the Ring sort of
has a will of its own, and so it even
when a character wants to destroy it, the Ring sort
of messes with their mind and and says, maybe you
shouldn't destroy it. So it's implied here that maybe Frodo
was trying to destroy it, but he hedged a bit
threw it into the cooler part of the fire. Is
that what you're saying, Um, I'm not sure about that,
(17:26):
Like the first time it goes into the fire. Yeah, perhaps,
though I mean really probably, because that's how the Ring works,
and that's how it works its will. Okay, So the
Hobbits fireplace, we'll come back to those. Uh that actual temperature. Again,
the Hobbits fireplaces get hotter than than other fireplaces, or
not as hot. I know, I would assume they're just
as hot as any fireplace. It's standard, you know, I
(17:48):
mean it's an open fireplace. Okay, now let's sit. You
know the dwarves they're really into working metal, right, Yes,
so dwarves are known for their metal work. So this
makes us wonder what is the maximum temperature of a furnace.
But specifically we should think about a medieval furnace, right,
because essentially the fantasy world of the Lord of the
Rings is as a medieval world. They're not in some
(18:09):
like steel foundry of today. Right. So a typical blast
furnace today that's going to reach temperatures of up to
three thousand degrees fahrenheit or uh one thousand, six hundred
and fifty degrees celsius. But during the Middle Ages, smelting
temps in Europe were not quite that high. So I
was looking around for a source on this, and I
(18:30):
ran across a website called our lima dot net. And
this is by Bert Hall from the Institute of for
the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the
University of Toronto, and he says the following quote. The
temperature inside the furnace is a critical variable. Most early
(18:50):
smelters in Europe could reach average temperatures of about seven
hundred degrees celsius and uh that would be uh one thousand,
two d degrees fahrenheit. And he continues, Now, pure iron
has a very high melting point, about one thousand thirty
degrees celsius, and that would be two thousand, seven eighty
six degrees fahrenheit. So when the newly formed mass of
(19:14):
iron coalesces at seven hundred degrees, it remains a red hot,
slightly plastic solid called a bloom. The smith can hammer
on this hot mass to shape it and to make
it it's extrude lumps of impurities that it might otherwise
congeal around. So that would give us a basic temperature
to work with here, seven hundred degrees celsius or one
(19:35):
thogrees fahrenheit. Okay, So one thing that points out, which
might be relevant to what we're talking about here, is
you don't have to fully reach the melting point of
a metal in order to do something to it right.
You can you can work with metal that's not fully liquefied,
you can just get it up to a temperature where
its strength is reduced, and you can deform it to
(19:57):
hammer the cuss out of it. Once it's soft, don't
have to like reduce it into a liquid that you
pour into a mold or something. Um So and and
but one of the things that Gandalf mentions two is
you can't just beat this thing with a hammer and
expect to destroy it either. So my read on this
to sort of you know, uh, you know, underpin what
we're talking about here is if we think of the ring,
(20:19):
think of it like a like a mythical magical creature
like a vampire or something where you can't just shoot it.
You have to beheaded or completely immolated like there must
you must reach a threshhold of absolute destruction to keep
it from you know, healing itself or or whatnot. Okay,
So maybe the idea is if you slightly deformed the ring,
(20:39):
it would kind of bounce back, because again, the ring
has a will of its own. Yeah, that's my imperfect
read on this, because some people might say, well, technically
Gandalf says, the ring doesn't even get hot in the fire. Okay, fine,
Oh I was also trying to look for things about that,
about like metals that don't get hot when heat. I
guess that would be poor thermal conductors. Uh, there are
(21:00):
some like like bismuth is a metal that is a
poor thermal conductor. I don't mean to suggest that the
Tolken had in mind that the ring was made out
of bismuth. Of course, bismuth has as a much lower
melting point, so that easily melted in a furnace. Yeah.
So anyway, I'm going to stick to my interpretation that
to destroy the ring of power, you would have to
(21:21):
destroy it absolutely. You would have to just completely either
shatter it into uh, into dust or even better and
more easily done in a in a world like this
melted into nothing. But as we've discussed already, a fireplace
isn't gonna do it, and a dwarf and furnace isn't
gonna be able to do it either, assuming that it's
you know, more or less a parallel to medieval smelting technology.
(21:43):
All right, so apparently you've got to use volcano. But
that makes me wonder how hot the volcanoes get. Do
they actually get hotter than furnaces? Yes? Uh, they do.
So I was looking into this. Um. You know, so
Mount Doom is a volcano. We have volcanoes, so uh,
luckily we can we and definitely, you know, we can
definitely look to that like that. The volcano isn't going
to change. You can't say, oh, it's a dwarf in volcano.
(22:05):
Maybe it would have been different now it's a volcano.
So we're talking about the temperature of magma. Uh. And
there are a few different types of magma to consider. So,
for instance, there's a basaltic magma which is high and iron,
magnesium and calcium, but low and potassium and sodium. And
it ranges in temperature from about a thousand celsius to
one thousand, two hundred celsius. And that's a between uh
(22:27):
one thousand, eight hundred and thirty two degrees fahrenheit and
two thousand, one hundred and ninety two degrees fahrenheit UM
and uh. And as a specific example of this, fountaining
magma from Coupe Bay Anaha um uh it's a volcano
in Hawaii. UH. And this is uh basalts magma here. Uh.
The magma in the lake there has been recorded to
(22:50):
reach temperatures of one thousand, one hundred fifty three degree
celsius or two thousand, one hundred seven point four degrees fahrenheit,
and that was on January nineteenth, nineteen ninety uh. This,
according to Pinkerton, at all a hot ear for lava, right,
and this is thought to be a reasonable reflection of
the internal lava temperature. One thing to keep in mind
(23:10):
is that the lava, the lava at the surface, is
going to cool off very quickly when it contacts the air,
dropping hundreds of degrees in a second. This pointed out
in the next one article in The New York Times
by c Clayborne Ray titled how hot can lava gate?
So I reckon question, Yeah, I recommend that for anyone
wants a deeper dive. But now there are a few
other different types of magma as well, but I'm just
(23:32):
gonna skip over those because we've already touched on the
hottest magma and and it's it's Mount Doomed, so it
should be the hottest magma. Maybe we should because the
other magma names has sound like Tolkien words and acidic magma,
you've got them here, rhyolitic magma, rhyolytics sounds very token.
It is. Yeah, dasite is the other one rhyolital. But
(23:56):
but these are these are all gonna have you know,
these are gonna be cool. There's still magna, they're still
very hot, but we're gonna stick with the with it
with the hottest magma for our purposes here and again,
the hottest magma we've considered here is one thousand, two
hundred degrees celsius or two thousand onegrees fahrenheit, and the
medieval forge temperatures, uh, you know, are seemingly in the
(24:16):
range of seven hundred degrees celsius or one thousand two
degrees fahrenheit. So it's definitely a situation where the forage
is not as hot as the magma. Like we can
at least we can at least say that, yes, this
makes sense. That's something that could not be burned in
a dwarf, and forge could still be burned, could be
still be melted away inside of a volcano. Now if
(24:39):
we were talking about a modern furnace, that would would
be a significantly different issue. Yes, so a modern furnace
is going to trump the mountain and and I think
you know Againdalf mentions dragon fire, like nice, healthy, small
dragon fire could have done it. And if we think
of that as being more or less on par with
perhaps a modern last furnace, that would have been like,
(25:02):
you know, the three thousand degrees fahrenheit, um, then than yeah,
that's that's that's another number to just sort of keep
in the back of our mind as we proceed here.
So what you should have done is just give somebody
the ring and then get them to go annoy a dragon.
But there are no more dragons left, or at least
none that are healthy enough to do this. That's that's
Gandal's point, because Smag could have probably done it, but
(25:24):
you already killed off Smag in the first book, so
thanks Barred. Also, you know, Smag wouldn't have gone along
with that plan. He would have sniffed it out, too
clever for that. So so that leaves us to consider all, like,
all the elements then, and which ones have a high
enough melting point that they would be beyond the melting
(25:46):
abilities of of the dwarve in furnace but within the
melting abilities of the volcano. Okay, that makes sense to me.
So again, the highest temperature we've reached here via magma
two thousand, one hundred ninety two degrees fahrenheit or one thousand,
two hundred degrees celsius. And when we start looking at
the melting points of various elements, there there are elements
(26:07):
that are below that that melting point. There are also
elements that have a much higher melting point that that
you could you could not fully melt even within the
fires of Mount Doom, well unless you assume to the
Mount Doom is somehow magical in some way right now.
One of the one of the problems I guess here
is though, when you start looking at some just like
standard metals that could be uh you know, they could
(26:29):
you could forge a ring out of even some of them.
Like we're doing some pretty high melting points, like melting
point of iron is um two thousand, eight hundred degrees fahrenheit.
Melting point of steel gets up that high as well.
Uh so like these are already, um, you know, these
are going to be beyond the ability of of Mount
(26:50):
Doom to fully melt, if that's indeed what we have
to depend on. And then you look at other things
like h like a palladium has a melting point of
two thousand, eight hundred and thirty point eight two degrees fahrenheit, uh,
Tungsten uh six thousand, one nine two degrees fahrenheit, uranium
two thousand and seventy degrees fahrenheit. You know these are
(27:12):
again for for absolute melting to take place. Uh. So
you know that kind of muddies things a bit, I guess.
But but then again, one of the things to think
about sar And is that, like he's a powerful entity.
I wonder is he even limited by just going to
the shores of the volcanic lake, Like maybe he can
go down within the volcano. Maybe he can you know,
(27:33):
he can go to even you know, greater depths in
the earth, and and that's where the forging has taken place.
You know that, like this is something that is forged
not merely within a volcano, but within like the heart
of the earth, the depths of Mount Doom, not not
the surface of Mount Doom. Right now, I ended up
like making a whole list of different elements, and they're
(27:55):
melting points in both celsius and fahrenheit, which I am
I'm going to not read that entire list because it's
going it would if we get tedious fast. Uh. And also,
you know, when we throw a bunch of numbers at you,
I know, it's it's not gonna necessarily do anything. But basically,
you know, there's a whole range here things with greater
and lesser melting points, but not all of them are
(28:15):
going to be quite suitable for crafting anything out of
you especially a ring. Uh and and god bless the
Internet for this, but there are there are tons of
discussions online regarding whether you could make a sword out
of any given element. So there'll be a lot of
you know, some of these are are you know, fantasy
or sci fi or sometimes you know more they're more
(28:36):
like you know, sword nerd websites and someone will be like,
could I make a sword out of uranium? And people
be like, well, then not a very good sword. Yes,
you could make you could make a sword, but it
would be heavy, it wouldn't the fact that it was
made out of uranium wouldn't really give you much of
an advantage in combat. That sort of thing, or you know,
titanium being another one where similar questions you're asked, uh,
(28:57):
you know where pure titanium sword? It sounds eight in
a you know, fantasy sense, but when you start looking
at the details there. Well, it would be you know,
it would it would be more, it would be brittle,
It wouldn't hold up to repeated use. That sort of thing.
One of the more impressive elements that pops up, though,
is tungsten um. Tungsten has a melting point of six
(29:18):
thousand onerees fahrenheit or three thousand, four hundred and twenty
two degrees celsius, and it has a number of industrial
uses due to its durability, and it's used in alloys
for this purpose as well, because it is very resistant
to heat. Not only is tungsten potentially a great choice
for the one ring, uh you, you can actually go
online right now and you can order tungsten or tungsten
(29:41):
alloy replicas of the one Ring from the Lord of
the Rings movie. So I don't think we're breaking any
new ground by saying maybe tungsten um so you can
heat them up and they'll glow. Yeah. Well, I don't know.
There weren't any product images that show people taking them
up in their hobbit and their shire heart. But an
(30:01):
interesting thing about about something like tungsten, because because it
might you know, it forces you to ask, well, how
do you forge something with such a high temperature, so
it's it's not worked like other metals in a forge.
What you do is you take powdered tungsten and it's
generally mixed with small amounts of say powdered nickel or
other metals, and then it is centered or formed into
(30:23):
a coherent mass by heating without melting. So this could
conceivably be the forging technology that that's saar On acquires
from the you know, the smelting lords of old and
brings into his creation of the One Ring. Uh. You
know again, there's still some problems there when you started saying,
well then, you know, how how is it destroyed? Then?
(30:45):
But I think tungsten is a you know, a reasonable guess.
If we're going to limit ourselves to the you know,
the scientific world for making guesses about uh, you know,
highly powerful magical objects, how about some crazier guesses. Yeah, well,
let's let's take a quick break and when we come back,
we'll get crazier with our guesses regarding the material that
was used to compose the One Ring. Than alright, we're back.
(31:12):
We're talking about the One Ring and what it could
conceivably be made of aside from magic Okay, I think
we're getting into weirder possible answers now, But I was
just trying to figure out. You know, there's a there's
that scene where Gimle tries to smash it with his axe,
and you have to assume that since Gimle Gimli is
a he's a tough dude, right, he should be able
(31:33):
to cleave just about any middle earthly material with a
swift blow of his mighty axe. Right, So what could
withstand his mind? And furthermore, I should point out in
the movie version with Peter Jackson, it's John Ree Davies,
And even if Gimley couldn't smash the ring, John Ree
Davies should be able to smash the ring. He I mean,
he brings the slow energy. So whatever that is, I
(31:55):
have to assume it's got to be like the strongest
material in the entire world. So what is the strongest
material in the entire world? I think it depends on
whether you're counting hypothetical materials that may exist somewhere in
the universe versus materials that we can actually touch here
in the lab. But maybe first we go to the
(32:17):
hypothetical materials somewhere in the universe, so it is the
fate of some dying stars to become a neutron star.
Recently on the podcast also we've been talking about black holes,
and this is a similar story. You've got a massive star,
maybe something with about ten times the mass of the Sun.
It grows old, it uses up its hydrogen fuel, it
(32:39):
begins fusing heavier elements, and then it uses those up.
It can't hold itself up with the energy of its
fusion anymore, and it eventually explodes in a supernova. So
the heavy core collapses, the outer structure of lighter materials
gets blown out into space in this enormous blast of
energy and matter, and what's left behind is this incredibly
(33:00):
dense core, and gravity causes it to collapse in on itself.
And if the core is dense enough, it can go
over the edge, of course and become a black hole.
But if it's not dense enough, it becomes a neutron star,
the densest non black hole object in the universe, so
basically the densest thing that doesn't break our theories of physics.
(33:22):
So these leftover star cores display bizarre nuclear chemistry because
of how dense they are. You can tell from the
name neutron star. They tend to have an overwhelming population
of neutrons, the sub atomic particles that are electrically neutral,
and this is because the intense gravity of the object
presses positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons together and
(33:46):
they combine to form neutrons. And so neutron stars have
physical properties that are amazing to read about and impossible
to picture. That they can cram more than the mass
of the Sun into a sphere that's roughly just a
dozen miles or so across, like the mass of the
Sun inside a ball the size of a city. And
(34:07):
for a long time it's been a mystery of astrophysics
what exactly the inner layers of a neutron star are
made of. But more recently physicists have created these simulations
of what should be happening inside the flesh of a
neutron star, and they show the strange types of ultra
dense material probably living underneath the outer crust of neutron stars.
(34:30):
And these materials are known as nuclear pasta. They're named
that because in the simulations they sometimes resemble different pasta
shapes uh and like these different pasta shapes that would
form a different strata of the neutron star. I think,
so you get nuclear spaghetti, you get no ki, you
get buka tini or anti spaghetti, and you get lasagna sheets. Now, obviously,
(34:53):
because of the incredible density of this neutron swollen material,
it's probably gonna be hard to cleave it with an axe.
But how strong is it? While I was looking at
one study from eighteen by Kaplan, Schneider and Horowits called
Elasticity of nuclear Pasta in Physical Review Letters, and uh,
some of this nuclear pasta, they concluded, is probably the
(35:14):
strongest material in the entire universe. Ten billion times stronger
than steel. That's strong enough for you. That's pretty strong.
I don't know. I mean, I don't know if I
could tell the difference between ten billion times stronger than
steel and ten thousand times stronger than steel. I mean,
what what is the difference there? But yeah, I mean
it's it just places. It orders a magnitude beyond the
(35:34):
ability of a dwarf. And as to to deal with
or a dwarf in furnace, I would have to say
that no matter how strong Gimli is, no matter how
sharp his acts, he probably cannot mess with a ring
made of nuclear pasta. So nuclear pasta that's over the edge.
You know, you can't destroy it unless you've got some
kind of magic working in Mount Doom. Obviously it wouldn't
(35:55):
melt in Mount Doom, right, Yeah, I mean this is
this is another one where it is forced me to
rethink what I said earlier about the about absolute destruction
of the ring being necessary to render it powerless. I
feel like there's still a threshold of destruction that needs
to be wrought on the ring before it snaps and
leads its power and the dark Lords defeated. But I
(36:16):
think that that threshold probably fall short of actually melting it.
I mean, maybe it's a it's a moral defeat rather
than a physical destruction. Yeah, or whatever. Is like, it
has to become malleable enough for the magic to leave it. Uh,
And for that to happen, it needs to it needs
to fall into a volcano or or or even the
(36:39):
depths of a volcano. Yeah. Now, there are a couple
of reasons why nuclear pasta is probably not a good
candidate to make a ring out of. One is that
it is probably a bit too heavy, and other is
that I assume it would not react well with the
atmosphere of an environment like Middle Earth. It might sort of,
you know, become a big explosion or something. But but
(37:00):
all you know, just imagine you had a stable ring
made of nuclear pasta. It's probably too heavy to make
an effective ring. A commonly cited figure is that about
a teaspoon of the material that makes up a neutron
star would weigh more than a billion tons. So that
would be a difficult ring to wear. Uh, you might
need some help carrying it. Uh, yeah, you know, it's believable.
(37:22):
I guess that you know, Sauron could could carry it.
I mean that he's such a powerful entity. But I
don't know about a hobbit. Now, is there anything lighter
that is still strong with a high melting point? One
good candidate, I think here, though it is a modern
invention is graphine. Graphine is carbon. Of course, it's just carbon,
but it's carbon with a special molecular formation. It's a
(37:45):
single layer of hexagonal rings of carbon carbon molecules locking
with other hexagons at every vertex, and it's one atom
thick but sort of perfect on the molecular level. It's
often thought of as a kind of cutting edge super material.
It does have some amazing properties. It's electrically conductive, so
it has been singled out for potential uses in in
(38:07):
future electronics. It's extremely light well at the same time
being stronger than steel. I've seen estimates including between two
hundred and three hundred times stronger than steel. The problem
with graphing is that it's difficult to produce on a
large scale. Uh. Not that it's necessarily difficult to produce
in general. I was reading about one method that can
create layers of graphing just by heating up soybean oil,
(38:30):
but you don't get a lot out of it. Now,
I like this idea that the ring is not just
a material but a meta material, you know, I mean,
which it would makes perfect sense. And this is the
product of a being that's studied at the at the
Forge of the Gods. So you know, therefore, like we're
you know, we're trying to limit him and his abilities
(38:51):
based on you know, medieval or even modern levels of
of of metallurgical power and knowledge. Right, we're thinking about
him as like sort of a magical smith. Maybe instead
we should be thinking about him as some kind of
material scientists. Uh so, yeah, I was looking at one
paper dealing with the melting point of graphing, and I
(39:12):
was wondering, what that is. It's really high. Uh, it was.
So this was in physical chemistry chemical physics. I don't
know if that's a double name. That was the journal
by Gans, Gans Yang and Dornfield in called the initial
Stages of Melting of graphing between four thousand K and
six thousand K. That's really hot. The authors say graphing
(39:33):
has one of the highest melting points of any known substance. Basically,
they they use these models to say, okay, what would
it look like if you heat it up graphing to
these temperatures for these lengths of time? And uh. They
found that you could heat graphing up for a certain
amount of time to four thousand, five hundred degrees kelvin,
which is really hot, and it still wouldn't melt. It
(39:55):
would just sort of it would It would still be freestanding.
And they said on five thousand degrees kelvin the system
would start to melt. Five thousand degrees kelvin is roughly
forty s celsius or eight hundred fahrenheit. That's is that
hotter than any of the other stuff we looked at. Yeah,
that's that's pretty hot. Okay, So the surface of the
(40:15):
Sun that roughly five thousand, eight hundred degrees kelvin could
probably melt this form of graphine, But a normal volcano
wouldn't be enough to melt the graphine one ring. So
is Mount Doom hotter than the surface of the Sun
or their special properties involved here? No, but this would
this would make me come back to the idea that
at least with the problem that it's forging. What if
(40:37):
Sauron had to go to the volcano, not to forge
it at the shores of the volcanic lake, but like
descended to the center of the planet where you would
have temperatures that would be you know, on par with
the surface of the Sun. As for them destroying it
by casting it into the volcano, well that's that's where
you end up in a problematic area again, because if
that's the case, if it needs to reach the center
(40:59):
of the plant it to be destroyed, well, then that
means the the end of the Lord of the Rings
is not an end at all, and that the dark
Lord was never defeated, and is is you know, destined
to return time and time again the end question mark No,
this is a perfect explanation for why the end of
the third movie went on for seven hours. They were
(41:20):
waiting for the ring to sink sink low enough to
really get hot enough to melt under all that pressure. Yeah,
another main problem with graphine. I should say, oh, I
already mentioned this. It's it's so the problem is that
it's it's hard to manufacture large amounts of it. But
I don't know if that would be a problem for Saron,
because what if he just needed enough for one little
hobbit finger sized ring. That's true though of course when
(41:42):
he's a when he's the Dark Lord, he's somewhat bigger
in it and it still fits around his finger. That's
a good question. I was wondering about this very thing.
How does the ring fit a hobbit finger just fine,
but also fit the fingers of much larger creatures just
as well. I mean, may they address that? They and
it's just magic. That's what magical rings do. One size
(42:03):
fits all. Um. I don't know. I mean you could,
I guess you could go really sci fi crazy and say, well,
the ring is actually composed out of like nano robotic
material that is you know, these these tiny nanobots that
that fused together and carry out all these various processes
to you know, to to do all the things that
the Ring does. But I don't know at that point,
(42:24):
you're really you're really busting the magic out of it.
I like, I like the idea of keeping some level
of magic in the Ring and not not describing it
all the way. Nope, you already ruined it. The Ring
is nanobots. That's what it is now and forevermore. All right,
So there you have it. Um, is one of those
episodes where I guess we don't really have a conclusive answer,
and you know, north should we. But hopefully we've given
(42:46):
some giving you some food for thought and uh, and
also provided an excuse and a means of of discussing
you know, some of the temperatures and melting points involved here. Um.
If if we'd love to hear from anyone out there
who is you know, a big Tolkien fan or someone
who is you know, certainly more experienced than us with
with the use of forges, with with some of these materials. Uh.
(43:10):
You know, we'd love to get your thoughts on it
as well. Uh. And for that matter, are there other
Tolkien related topics you'd like us to to tease apart.
I think I wrote a piece for how Stuff Works
years ago about Hobbit metabolism, which which actually they're like,
there were There were at least a couple of papers
I was able to cite for their article where people
(43:32):
are like, Okay, let's see how much I can breakfast?
How much does the Hobbit eat? And then and so forth?
So I look that up. It's on how Stuff Works
dot com. In the meantime, if you want more episodes
of stuff to blow your mind, he don't over the
Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership.
That's where you'll find them all. And if you're interested
in uh, you know, others, let's say, not magical inventions,
(43:54):
but more mundane but equally amazing inventions, check out our
other podcast, Invention. You can find it at invention pod
dot com. And you can find both shows wherever you
get your podcast. Wherever you do get it, just make
sure you rate and review because that really helps us
out in the long run. Huge thanks to our producers
uh Seth Nicholas Johnson, and Maya Cole. If you would
(44:15):
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
or just to say hello. You can email us at contact.
That's Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radios. How
(44:35):
Stuff Works For more podcasts from my Heart Radio is
a the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
H three rings for Elvin King's Under the Sky, seven
for the dwarf lords in their halls of Stone, nine
for mortal men doomed to die, and one for the
Dark Lord on his dark throne in the Land of Mordor,
where the shadows lie. One ring to rule them all,
(00:23):
wondering to find them, one ring to bring them all,
and in the darkness bind them in the Land of Mordor,
where the Shadows lie. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:49):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and nerd Alert. We're
doing a Tolkien episode today. That's right, of course. The
cold open there was from J. R. Tolkien's The Lord
of the Rings, which was written in stages between ninety
seven and nineteen forty nine. I imagine everyone listening to
this is familiar with the Lord of the Rings. Uh, yeah,
(01:11):
pretty much. I mean we we'll try to make it
fun even if you're not. But yeah, Robert, you got
bit by the Lord of the Rings bug this week apparently,
and you wanted to talk about the One Ring of Power.
See if there's any way we could give it the
stuff to blow your mind treatment. Yeah, yeah, I've been
thinking a lot about Tolkien recently, I mean until obviously.
You know, I read Tolkien when I was younger. I
watched the movies when they came out, I watched the
(01:32):
animated films when when they were around, and uh, and
then I kind of took a break, and then I
came back and read The Hobbit to my son. Eventually,
I hope to read The Lord of the Rings to him.
Uh wait, when did the classic quote? You were reading
it to him at some point, weren't you when he said,
is it the Lord of the Rings yet? Yeah? Yeah,
he kind of got a little bored with the opening,
(01:53):
but at this point, like he's, yeah, he's super into
Harry Potter. I think he's pretty much ready for the
Lord of the Rings. But you know, the Hobbit is
better for younger readers as well. But it got me
thinking a lot about the Ring. Uh. And it's it's nature,
it's powers, and and also it is the task of
applying real world science to the One Ring and seeing
(02:14):
what we could potentially figure out. It'll have to be
a little bit of loosey goosey real world science. But
we'll do our best because obviously the one ring, the
Ring of Power, is an object of intense magical power
in the books, created by an intensely magical being in
an intensely magical fantasy world. And so our intent here
(02:36):
is not to you know, to cheapen all of that
or anything, or to or to myth busted or anything
like that, but you know, just to engage in the
fun exercise of saying, okay, okay, if if we had
to make this work with science, what would the ring
be made out of? What are the the you know,
what are the constraints involved that sort of thing. Now,
the Ring of Power in Lord of the Rings has
(02:57):
got to be one of the like ultimate ex examples
of a fantasy mcguffin. You know, an object that that
a plot can be built around that. There are a
lot of these story you end up with, like you know,
Wore Cruxes and Harry Potter and uh, there's very often
it's just convenient from a storytelling perspective to have a
magical object that must be uh, that must be managed,
(03:19):
and the logistics of which become the struggle for the
characters in the story. But the ring I think also
represents more than that. It's an interesting object in itself
because of its properties that to some people who own
it or where it, it confers these powers. And we
can discuss what the powers are alluded to be in
the story, uh in a minute. But also it has
(03:40):
this corrupting influence. So it actually I think does have
a kind of thematic commentary on the way that like
possessing great power has the tendency to corrupt people's motives
and way of seeing the world. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean
even even today, like certainly throughout human history, we can
look to the like the symbolic power of the um
(04:01):
like rings are used to to signify, you know, bonds
that have been made, social bonds, marriages, uh. They they
have long symbolized power or or wealth. The seal ring
that might be used as a stamp in wax to
show you the sigil of your authority. Right now, of course,
(04:21):
there's the super Bowl ring, right which and I mean
really it is as silly as the super Bowl ring
may be, it is it is you know, it is
drawing from this lineage of the ring as the symbol
of of power and accomplishment. And so yeah, I mean
all that's wrapped up in the myth of the Ring
as well, you know, not even to get into some
of the various things that Tolkien was drawing on, you know,
(04:43):
the Ring cycle of etcetera. Another token note I want
to make is I do want to drive home. Even
though Joe and I are both uh, you know, quite
familiar with token, neither of us are like Tolken experts.
Please don't come swinging your sword at us because we
left out some Tolkien d right, I mean it's happened before. Uh.
And and likewise we may not hit all the Tolkien
(05:05):
pronunciations in this. Uh, I can't wait, But but we're
gonna give it a shot. So first of all, let
me just run through the history of the One Ring
for everyone, okay, so that we can you know, fully
appreciate it. Here. So you're going beyond the Lord of
the Rings. You're going into the like the deep lore. Yes, yeah,
and uh and I cobbled this together from from from
(05:28):
rereading some segments of Tolkien's original work, but also from
rereading of segments from the Tolkien Encyclopedia, which is an
excellent book that came out I believe in like the
the nineties, I still have a copy of wonderful illustrations
throughout uh and uh So, anyway, without further ado, let
me tell you about the One Ring. So, the One
(05:50):
Ring was forged in the year sixteen hundred of the
second Age of the Sun by Sauron, forged within the
active volcano Mount Doom in the land of World War
So Saron was a former Maya spirit who served the
dark Lord Melkorp, who was defeated at the end of
the First Age of the Sun. And so then Saron,
(06:12):
in the guise of an atter, the giver of gifts,
he seduces the Alvin Smith's into forging the rings of power.
Uh these are the rings that from our opening reading
three rings for the Elvin King, seven for the dwarves,
nine for men, and you know, so that these may
be distributed among you know, the various intelligent species of
(06:34):
of the of the of the world. But then he
goes and he forges the one ring himself, the ring
that's going to control all of these rings, and and
also crackles with other powers will discuss. So it's a trick,
it's a trap. He's this godlike being who wants to
control the people's of Middle Earth, the elves, the dwarves,
(06:55):
the humans, and so he gives them these things that
are ostensibly like weapons or or sort of magical items
of power that allow them to increase their power and
dominance over the world. And once all, once all of
those people put the rings on and assume the power
for themselves, then he unlocks the trapdoor in the back
(07:15):
of the code, which is that he's got wondering that
gives him power over all the other people who are
wearing them exactly. Yeah, And and he take ends up
sort of taking various guys is the idea into different
forms throughout his history, you know, from the end the deceiver,
to the trickster, to the to the war lord, to
the seeker. So his fair form is destroyed in the
(07:37):
Fall of New Maniore and he arises again as this
dark lord in black armor. This is the one that
anyone who's even just set down to watch The Lord
of the Rings films probably remembers from the prologue. So
even if you only made it ten minutes in, you
saw this part. He saw the dark Lord in his armor.
But this too, this form too was destroyed at the
end of the Second Age of the Sun, and the
(07:58):
Ring was lost. But Saron did not perish because the
One Ring still existed, and his fate is bound to it. Um.
Even if you're more familiar with Harry Potter than Lord
of the Rings, you can think of the One Ring
is like is the horcrux, the single horcrux for Soron,
I suppose so in his in his reincarnated form, without
(08:19):
a body, he depends on this ring, or else he
cannot survive. Right. And so in the year one thousand
of the Third Age of the Sun, he rises again
as the Great Littless Eye Uh, seeking the Ring, waging
the War of the Ring. But his adversaries have found
it first, and they've hatched a plan to destroy it
(08:40):
by the only known means, casting it back into the
volcanic fires from which it was forged. Okay, so there
you've got the setting of the Lord of the Rings.
So you've got to take this ring back into enemy
territory to throw it into a volcano, which is the
only way it can be destroyed, the only way to
destroy this great enemy, God's sorcerer thing. Um. Now we
(09:02):
there are scenes in the movies, and I'm trying to
recall there in the book too. I mean we're like,
for example, Gimli the Dwarf played by John Ree Davies
and the Peter Jackson movies. Uh that you know, they're
getting the speech about how the Ring must be destroyed
in order to defeat Sauron. So he just whips out
his axe and he's like, all right, let's bust it.
And so he just swings his ax at the at
(09:23):
the ring. But it doesn't work right. He instead, I
think his ax breaks on it when he tries to
cleave the ring with it. So the ring is uh
portrayed as something that is completely indestructible except in the
fires of the volcano where it was forged. Yeah, there's
a there's a great passage in the Fellowship of the
Ring where Gandolf explains all this to Frodo after it's
(09:44):
been cast into the fireplace once and Frodo has has
tried to will himself to throw it once more into
the deepest part of the fire, but cannot, and so
Gandalf says the following, But as for breaking the ring,
force is useless, even if you took it and struck
it with a heavy sledge hammer. It would make no
dnt in it. It cannot be unmade by your hands
(10:06):
or by mine. Your small fire, of course, would not
melt even ordinary gold. This ring has already passed through
it unscathed and even unheeded. But there is no smith's
forge in this shire that could change it at all.
Not even the anvils and furnaces of the dwarves could
do that. It has been said that dragon fire could
melt and consume the rings of Power, but there is
(10:28):
not now any dragon left on Earth in which the
old fire is hot enough, Nor was there ever any dragon,
not even on Kalaghan the Black, who could have harmed
the one ring, the ruling Ring, for that was made
by Saron himself. There is only one way to find
the cracks of Doom in the depths of Oro Dron
(10:49):
the Fire Mountain, and cast the ring in there, if
you really wish to destroy it, to put it beyond
the grasp of the enemy forever. Thus spoke Gandalf, and
off knew what he was talking about. By the way,
I've always thought Syrian McKellen made a great Gandalf, But
I do have a strong attachment to John Houston's Gandolf
in the nineteen seventy seven animated version in the nineteen
(11:11):
eighties Return of the King. Um, so that you know
that that was the token of of my childhood, and
so so I was trying to summon a little John
Houston flavor there my limited ability to do so, the
ones that make saw Rouman in the Santa Claus like
his red robes. Um. You know, I I haven't rewatched
the Return of the King in a while, but but
(11:33):
I have rewatched the Hobbit at that it held up
pretty well. You know. Oh, I totally agree that Ian
mckelen is a great Gandalf. In fact, I would say
that even if you don't like the movies for any
other reason, the Peter Jackson films are great just for
Ian McKellen's performance. Oh yeah, And I mean Christopher Lee.
It's it's got a wonderful oh Christopher Lee. Of course
that goes without saying. Uh So another note on the ring,
(11:55):
just real quick. Not that it's very important to what
we're going to be talking about from to the episode,
but what happens when you wear the ring? Oh yeah,
I was actually trying to figure this out, even though
I know the story. I was last night, I was googling, like,
what does the Ring actually do you know, other than
we know it confers this kind of vague power, But
it actually does have some specified powers in the mythology.
(12:19):
I mean the big one of course, and this is
the one that comes up in the Hobbit as well,
is that when you put it on, you become invisible
to most creatures, though at the same time you become
highly visible to certain other beings, namely the Ring wraiths,
um and uh and saw On himself. But it's like
allows you to sort of shift into another plane of
(12:40):
existence and then doing so, become invisible. But I think
that's only for some creatures who wear it, right, Um,
I mean the making them invisible? Right, Yeah, I mean
it's I don't think it's it's implied that when saw
On himself wears that he is invisible. But then again,
it's a different matter when you know the dark Lord
(13:02):
himself wears the Ring as opposed to win a mortal
wears the Ring. Oh, and I guess another thing to
specifies that the Wonder Ring, the powers of the Wondering
maybe greater or different uh than the powers of the
other rings that were given off to the to the
kings of the Mortals and the elves. Yes, yeah, it
is the it is the great ring. It is the
one that the Master himself forged. Um. And you know,
(13:25):
one note again about the sort of the origins of
sro On is that in his like previous life, you know,
as like an unfallen entity, as one of these Maya spirits,
he originally served the the ann or forge god a
Uli if I'm saying that right, who is you know,
a god of the forge like a Festus. So you
(13:47):
know he would have had, you know, presumably had access
to all knowledge of metallurgy and uh and metal making
and crafting in general. Yeah, well, maybe we should take
a break and then when we come back we can
explore some questions about what the Ring of Power could
possibly be made of. All right, we're back, so you
(14:11):
know we're gonna again. We're gonna cherry pick a little
bit here. This is not going to be, you know,
a perfect dissection of everything. I don't think Tolkien was
going for hard sci fi and wanted him to, you know,
I mean, oh my god, wait, no, that's a brilliant idea.
So we've had various rewrites of Lord of the Rings. Uh.
You know, there is the rewrite of the story that
(14:32):
tells it from more Door's perspective that casts like Gandalf
and the Elves as as the villains and says, actually,
more Door is just a you know, it's just a
region of people who are trying to develop industrial technology
and they're being oppressed by these you know, ancient kingdoms
of magic users and they're fighting back. So that that's
like that, which is a wonderful treatment idea. I haven't
(14:54):
read it, but it's a wonderful idea because you see
that in plenty of like in plenty of myths and
and stories of old where he's got one side is
is cast as the heroes, the other side as the
demonic other, and the reality is is, you know, is
something different than that. There's something more balanced probably yeah,
uh so, so yeah, there's like that take. But here's
(15:15):
the take I want now, like the Arthur C. Clark
version of Whatever to the Rings that tries to tell
the same story but just imagines everything is like totally
mundane physics and chemistry and and how all that has achieved.
All right, well, well let's get into I guess some
of the chemistry here. Um, So let's just start by
(15:36):
talking about things you could throw a ring into in
an attempt to melt it. Okay, So, so to refresh again,
you've got this ring of power. You need to destroy
it to defeat the bad guy. But you can't just
throw it in a regular fire. The heroes can't do
anything about it except take it back to the volcano
where it was made. That's the only thing that will
destroy it. In terms of fire sources, Gandal says, fireplace
(15:59):
isn't gonna cut it, dwarf and furnace isn't gonna cut it.
Only the volcano can can cut it. So let's talk
about the temperatures involved here. So, Uh, first of all,
let's take the Hobbits fireplace. If you look for a
you know, you look at a maximum open wood fireplace temperature. Um.
I was looking around for sources on this. I found
a few different different ones that that more or less matchup.
(16:21):
Hearth dot com, which indeed is a place for people
who are just into fireplaces to talk about fireplaces. Uh.
They have like a message board. It definitely it's a
full message board, but it lists it lists an average
fireplaces being somewhere between uh one thousand, two hundred degrees
to dred degrees fahrenheit. I've also seen it as high
(16:44):
as sixteen hundred um again for the hottest part of
the fire, where Frodo never actually throws it because the
will of the Ring prevents it. Uh And as far
as Celsius, we'd be talking a range of roughly what's
six degrees And to clarify there, I guess this doesn't
really matter for the episode. But that's another thing about
(17:04):
the Ring is that the wing, the Ring sort of
has a will of its own, and so it even
when a character wants to destroy it, the Ring sort
of messes with their mind and and says, maybe you
shouldn't destroy it. So it's implied here that maybe Frodo
was trying to destroy it, but he hedged a bit
threw it into the cooler part of the fire. Is
that what you're saying, Um, I'm not sure about that,
(17:26):
Like the first time it goes into the fire. Yeah, perhaps,
though I mean really probably, because that's how the Ring works,
and that's how it works its will. Okay, So the
Hobbits fireplace, we'll come back to those. Uh that actual temperature. Again,
the Hobbits fireplaces get hotter than than other fireplaces, or
not as hot. I know, I would assume they're just
as hot as any fireplace. It's standard, you know, I
(17:48):
mean it's an open fireplace. Okay, now let's sit. You
know the dwarves they're really into working metal, right, Yes,
so dwarves are known for their metal work. So this
makes us wonder what is the maximum temperature of a furnace.
But specifically we should think about a medieval furnace, right,
because essentially the fantasy world of the Lord of the
Rings is as a medieval world. They're not in some
(18:09):
like steel foundry of today. Right. So a typical blast
furnace today that's going to reach temperatures of up to
three thousand degrees fahrenheit or uh one thousand, six hundred
and fifty degrees celsius. But during the Middle Ages, smelting
temps in Europe were not quite that high. So I
was looking around for a source on this, and I
(18:30):
ran across a website called our lima dot net. And
this is by Bert Hall from the Institute of for
the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the
University of Toronto, and he says the following quote. The
temperature inside the furnace is a critical variable. Most early
(18:50):
smelters in Europe could reach average temperatures of about seven
hundred degrees celsius and uh that would be uh one thousand,
two d degrees fahrenheit. And he continues, Now, pure iron
has a very high melting point, about one thousand thirty
degrees celsius, and that would be two thousand, seven eighty
six degrees fahrenheit. So when the newly formed mass of
(19:14):
iron coalesces at seven hundred degrees, it remains a red hot,
slightly plastic solid called a bloom. The smith can hammer
on this hot mass to shape it and to make
it it's extrude lumps of impurities that it might otherwise
congeal around. So that would give us a basic temperature
to work with here, seven hundred degrees celsius or one
(19:35):
thogrees fahrenheit. Okay, So one thing that points out, which
might be relevant to what we're talking about here, is
you don't have to fully reach the melting point of
a metal in order to do something to it right.
You can you can work with metal that's not fully liquefied,
you can just get it up to a temperature where
its strength is reduced, and you can deform it to
(19:57):
hammer the cuss out of it. Once it's soft, don't
have to like reduce it into a liquid that you
pour into a mold or something. Um So and and
but one of the things that Gandalf mentions two is
you can't just beat this thing with a hammer and
expect to destroy it either. So my read on this
to sort of you know, uh, you know, underpin what
we're talking about here is if we think of the ring,
(20:19):
think of it like a like a mythical magical creature
like a vampire or something where you can't just shoot it.
You have to beheaded or completely immolated like there must
you must reach a threshhold of absolute destruction to keep
it from you know, healing itself or or whatnot. Okay,
So maybe the idea is if you slightly deformed the ring,
(20:39):
it would kind of bounce back, because again, the ring
has a will of its own. Yeah, that's my imperfect
read on this, because some people might say, well, technically
Gandalf says, the ring doesn't even get hot in the fire. Okay, fine,
Oh I was also trying to look for things about that,
about like metals that don't get hot when heat. I
guess that would be poor thermal conductors. Uh, there are
(21:00):
some like like bismuth is a metal that is a
poor thermal conductor. I don't mean to suggest that the
Tolken had in mind that the ring was made out
of bismuth. Of course, bismuth has as a much lower
melting point, so that easily melted in a furnace. Yeah.
So anyway, I'm going to stick to my interpretation that
to destroy the ring of power, you would have to
(21:21):
destroy it absolutely. You would have to just completely either
shatter it into uh, into dust or even better and
more easily done in a in a world like this
melted into nothing. But as we've discussed already, a fireplace
isn't gonna do it, and a dwarf and furnace isn't
gonna be able to do it either, assuming that it's
you know, more or less a parallel to medieval smelting technology.
(21:43):
All right, so apparently you've got to use volcano. But
that makes me wonder how hot the volcanoes get. Do
they actually get hotter than furnaces? Yes? Uh, they do.
So I was looking into this. Um. You know, so
Mount Doom is a volcano. We have volcanoes, so uh,
luckily we can we and definitely, you know, we can
definitely look to that like that. The volcano isn't going
to change. You can't say, oh, it's a dwarf in volcano.
(22:05):
Maybe it would have been different now it's a volcano.
So we're talking about the temperature of magma. Uh. And
there are a few different types of magma to consider. So,
for instance, there's a basaltic magma which is high and iron,
magnesium and calcium, but low and potassium and sodium. And
it ranges in temperature from about a thousand celsius to
one thousand, two hundred celsius. And that's a between uh
(22:27):
one thousand, eight hundred and thirty two degrees fahrenheit and
two thousand, one hundred and ninety two degrees fahrenheit UM
and uh. And as a specific example of this, fountaining
magma from Coupe Bay Anaha um uh it's a volcano
in Hawaii. UH. And this is uh basalts magma here. Uh.
The magma in the lake there has been recorded to
(22:50):
reach temperatures of one thousand, one hundred fifty three degree
celsius or two thousand, one hundred seven point four degrees fahrenheit,
and that was on January nineteenth, nineteen ninety uh. This,
according to Pinkerton, at all a hot ear for lava, right,
and this is thought to be a reasonable reflection of
the internal lava temperature. One thing to keep in mind
(23:10):
is that the lava, the lava at the surface, is
going to cool off very quickly when it contacts the air,
dropping hundreds of degrees in a second. This pointed out
in the next one article in The New York Times
by c Clayborne Ray titled how hot can lava gate?
So I reckon question, Yeah, I recommend that for anyone
wants a deeper dive. But now there are a few
other different types of magma as well, but I'm just
(23:32):
gonna skip over those because we've already touched on the
hottest magma and and it's it's Mount Doomed, so it
should be the hottest magma. Maybe we should because the
other magma names has sound like Tolkien words and acidic magma,
you've got them here, rhyolitic magma, rhyolytics sounds very token.
It is. Yeah, dasite is the other one rhyolital. But
(23:56):
but these are these are all gonna have you know,
these are gonna be cool. There's still magna, they're still
very hot, but we're gonna stick with the with it
with the hottest magma for our purposes here and again,
the hottest magma we've considered here is one thousand, two
hundred degrees celsius or two thousand onegrees fahrenheit, and the
medieval forge temperatures, uh, you know, are seemingly in the
(24:16):
range of seven hundred degrees celsius or one thousand two
degrees fahrenheit. So it's definitely a situation where the forage
is not as hot as the magma. Like we can
at least we can at least say that, yes, this
makes sense. That's something that could not be burned in
a dwarf, and forge could still be burned, could be
still be melted away inside of a volcano. Now if
(24:39):
we were talking about a modern furnace, that would would
be a significantly different issue. Yes, so a modern furnace
is going to trump the mountain and and I think
you know Againdalf mentions dragon fire, like nice, healthy, small
dragon fire could have done it. And if we think
of that as being more or less on par with
perhaps a modern last furnace, that would have been like,
(25:02):
you know, the three thousand degrees fahrenheit, um, then than yeah,
that's that's that's another number to just sort of keep
in the back of our mind as we proceed here.
So what you should have done is just give somebody
the ring and then get them to go annoy a dragon.
But there are no more dragons left, or at least
none that are healthy enough to do this. That's that's
Gandal's point, because Smag could have probably done it, but
(25:24):
you already killed off Smag in the first book, so
thanks Barred. Also, you know, Smag wouldn't have gone along
with that plan. He would have sniffed it out, too
clever for that. So so that leaves us to consider all, like,
all the elements then, and which ones have a high
enough melting point that they would be beyond the melting
(25:46):
abilities of of the dwarve in furnace but within the
melting abilities of the volcano. Okay, that makes sense to me.
So again, the highest temperature we've reached here via magma
two thousand, one hundred ninety two degrees fahrenheit or one thousand,
two hundred degrees celsius. And when we start looking at
the melting points of various elements, there there are elements
(26:07):
that are below that that melting point. There are also
elements that have a much higher melting point that that
you could you could not fully melt even within the
fires of Mount Doom, well unless you assume to the
Mount Doom is somehow magical in some way right now.
One of the one of the problems I guess here
is though, when you start looking at some just like
standard metals that could be uh you know, they could
(26:29):
you could forge a ring out of even some of them.
Like we're doing some pretty high melting points, like melting
point of iron is um two thousand, eight hundred degrees fahrenheit.
Melting point of steel gets up that high as well.
Uh so like these are already, um, you know, these
are going to be beyond the ability of of Mount
(26:50):
Doom to fully melt, if that's indeed what we have
to depend on. And then you look at other things
like h like a palladium has a melting point of
two thousand, eight hundred and thirty point eight two degrees fahrenheit, uh,
Tungsten uh six thousand, one nine two degrees fahrenheit, uranium
two thousand and seventy degrees fahrenheit. You know these are
(27:12):
again for for absolute melting to take place. Uh. So
you know that kind of muddies things a bit, I guess.
But but then again, one of the things to think
about sar And is that, like he's a powerful entity.
I wonder is he even limited by just going to
the shores of the volcanic lake, Like maybe he can
go down within the volcano. Maybe he can you know,
(27:33):
he can go to even you know, greater depths in
the earth, and and that's where the forging has taken place.
You know that, like this is something that is forged
not merely within a volcano, but within like the heart
of the earth, the depths of Mount Doom, not not
the surface of Mount Doom. Right now, I ended up
like making a whole list of different elements, and they're
(27:55):
melting points in both celsius and fahrenheit, which I am
I'm going to not read that entire list because it's
going it would if we get tedious fast. Uh. And also,
you know, when we throw a bunch of numbers at you,
I know, it's it's not gonna necessarily do anything. But basically,
you know, there's a whole range here things with greater
and lesser melting points, but not all of them are
(28:15):
going to be quite suitable for crafting anything out of
you especially a ring. Uh and and god bless the
Internet for this, but there are there are tons of
discussions online regarding whether you could make a sword out
of any given element. So there'll be a lot of
you know, some of these are are you know, fantasy
or sci fi or sometimes you know more they're more
(28:36):
like you know, sword nerd websites and someone will be like,
could I make a sword out of uranium? And people
be like, well, then not a very good sword. Yes,
you could make you could make a sword, but it
would be heavy, it wouldn't the fact that it was
made out of uranium wouldn't really give you much of
an advantage in combat. That sort of thing, or you know,
titanium being another one where similar questions you're asked, uh,
(28:57):
you know where pure titanium sword? It sounds eight in
a you know, fantasy sense, but when you start looking
at the details there. Well, it would be you know,
it would it would be more, it would be brittle,
It wouldn't hold up to repeated use. That sort of thing.
One of the more impressive elements that pops up, though,
is tungsten um. Tungsten has a melting point of six
(29:18):
thousand onerees fahrenheit or three thousand, four hundred and twenty
two degrees celsius, and it has a number of industrial
uses due to its durability, and it's used in alloys
for this purpose as well, because it is very resistant
to heat. Not only is tungsten potentially a great choice
for the one ring, uh you, you can actually go
online right now and you can order tungsten or tungsten
(29:41):
alloy replicas of the one Ring from the Lord of
the Rings movie. So I don't think we're breaking any
new ground by saying maybe tungsten um so you can
heat them up and they'll glow. Yeah. Well, I don't know.
There weren't any product images that show people taking them
up in their hobbit and their shire heart. But an
(30:01):
interesting thing about about something like tungsten, because because it
might you know, it forces you to ask, well, how
do you forge something with such a high temperature, so
it's it's not worked like other metals in a forge.
What you do is you take powdered tungsten and it's
generally mixed with small amounts of say powdered nickel or
other metals, and then it is centered or formed into
(30:23):
a coherent mass by heating without melting. So this could
conceivably be the forging technology that that's saar On acquires
from the you know, the smelting lords of old and
brings into his creation of the One Ring. Uh. You
know again, there's still some problems there when you started saying,
well then, you know, how how is it destroyed? Then?
(30:45):
But I think tungsten is a you know, a reasonable guess.
If we're going to limit ourselves to the you know,
the scientific world for making guesses about uh, you know,
highly powerful magical objects, how about some crazier guesses. Yeah, well,
let's let's take a quick break and when we come back,
we'll get crazier with our guesses regarding the material that
was used to compose the One Ring. Than alright, we're back.
(31:12):
We're talking about the One Ring and what it could
conceivably be made of aside from magic Okay, I think
we're getting into weirder possible answers now, But I was
just trying to figure out. You know, there's a there's
that scene where Gimle tries to smash it with his axe,
and you have to assume that since Gimle Gimli is
a he's a tough dude, right, he should be able
(31:33):
to cleave just about any middle earthly material with a
swift blow of his mighty axe. Right, So what could
withstand his mind? And furthermore, I should point out in
the movie version with Peter Jackson, it's John Ree Davies,
And even if Gimley couldn't smash the ring, John Ree
Davies should be able to smash the ring. He I mean,
he brings the slow energy. So whatever that is, I
(31:55):
have to assume it's got to be like the strongest
material in the entire world. So what is the strongest
material in the entire world? I think it depends on
whether you're counting hypothetical materials that may exist somewhere in
the universe versus materials that we can actually touch here
in the lab. But maybe first we go to the
(32:17):
hypothetical materials somewhere in the universe, so it is the
fate of some dying stars to become a neutron star.
Recently on the podcast also we've been talking about black holes,
and this is a similar story. You've got a massive star,
maybe something with about ten times the mass of the Sun.
It grows old, it uses up its hydrogen fuel, it
(32:39):
begins fusing heavier elements, and then it uses those up.
It can't hold itself up with the energy of its
fusion anymore, and it eventually explodes in a supernova. So
the heavy core collapses, the outer structure of lighter materials
gets blown out into space in this enormous blast of
energy and matter, and what's left behind is this incredibly
(33:00):
dense core, and gravity causes it to collapse in on itself.
And if the core is dense enough, it can go
over the edge, of course and become a black hole.
But if it's not dense enough, it becomes a neutron star,
the densest non black hole object in the universe, so
basically the densest thing that doesn't break our theories of physics.
(33:22):
So these leftover star cores display bizarre nuclear chemistry because
of how dense they are. You can tell from the
name neutron star. They tend to have an overwhelming population
of neutrons, the sub atomic particles that are electrically neutral,
and this is because the intense gravity of the object
presses positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons together and
(33:46):
they combine to form neutrons. And so neutron stars have
physical properties that are amazing to read about and impossible
to picture. That they can cram more than the mass
of the Sun into a sphere that's roughly just a
dozen miles or so across, like the mass of the
Sun inside a ball the size of a city. And
(34:07):
for a long time it's been a mystery of astrophysics
what exactly the inner layers of a neutron star are
made of. But more recently physicists have created these simulations
of what should be happening inside the flesh of a
neutron star, and they show the strange types of ultra
dense material probably living underneath the outer crust of neutron stars.
(34:30):
And these materials are known as nuclear pasta. They're named
that because in the simulations they sometimes resemble different pasta
shapes uh and like these different pasta shapes that would
form a different strata of the neutron star. I think,
so you get nuclear spaghetti, you get no ki, you
get buka tini or anti spaghetti, and you get lasagna sheets. Now, obviously,
(34:53):
because of the incredible density of this neutron swollen material,
it's probably gonna be hard to cleave it with an axe.
But how strong is it? While I was looking at
one study from eighteen by Kaplan, Schneider and Horowits called
Elasticity of nuclear Pasta in Physical Review Letters, and uh,
some of this nuclear pasta, they concluded, is probably the
(35:14):
strongest material in the entire universe. Ten billion times stronger
than steel. That's strong enough for you. That's pretty strong.
I don't know. I mean, I don't know if I
could tell the difference between ten billion times stronger than
steel and ten thousand times stronger than steel. I mean,
what what is the difference there? But yeah, I mean
it's it just places. It orders a magnitude beyond the
(35:34):
ability of a dwarf. And as to to deal with
or a dwarf in furnace, I would have to say
that no matter how strong Gimli is, no matter how
sharp his acts, he probably cannot mess with a ring
made of nuclear pasta. So nuclear pasta that's over the edge.
You know, you can't destroy it unless you've got some
kind of magic working in Mount Doom. Obviously it wouldn't
(35:55):
melt in Mount Doom, right, Yeah, I mean this is
this is another one where it is forced me to
rethink what I said earlier about the about absolute destruction
of the ring being necessary to render it powerless. I
feel like there's still a threshold of destruction that needs
to be wrought on the ring before it snaps and
leads its power and the dark Lords defeated. But I
(36:16):
think that that threshold probably fall short of actually melting it.
I mean, maybe it's a it's a moral defeat rather
than a physical destruction. Yeah, or whatever. Is like, it
has to become malleable enough for the magic to leave it. Uh,
And for that to happen, it needs to it needs
to fall into a volcano or or or even the
(36:39):
depths of a volcano. Yeah. Now, there are a couple
of reasons why nuclear pasta is probably not a good
candidate to make a ring out of. One is that
it is probably a bit too heavy, and other is
that I assume it would not react well with the
atmosphere of an environment like Middle Earth. It might sort of,
you know, become a big explosion or something. But but
(37:00):
all you know, just imagine you had a stable ring
made of nuclear pasta. It's probably too heavy to make
an effective ring. A commonly cited figure is that about
a teaspoon of the material that makes up a neutron
star would weigh more than a billion tons. So that
would be a difficult ring to wear. Uh, you might
need some help carrying it. Uh, yeah, you know, it's believable.
(37:22):
I guess that you know, Sauron could could carry it.
I mean that he's such a powerful entity. But I
don't know about a hobbit. Now, is there anything lighter
that is still strong with a high melting point? One
good candidate, I think here, though it is a modern
invention is graphine. Graphine is carbon. Of course, it's just carbon,
but it's carbon with a special molecular formation. It's a
(37:45):
single layer of hexagonal rings of carbon carbon molecules locking
with other hexagons at every vertex, and it's one atom
thick but sort of perfect on the molecular level. It's
often thought of as a kind of cutting edge super material.
It does have some amazing properties. It's electrically conductive, so
it has been singled out for potential uses in in
(38:07):
future electronics. It's extremely light well at the same time
being stronger than steel. I've seen estimates including between two
hundred and three hundred times stronger than steel. The problem
with graphing is that it's difficult to produce on a
large scale. Uh. Not that it's necessarily difficult to produce
in general. I was reading about one method that can
create layers of graphing just by heating up soybean oil,
(38:30):
but you don't get a lot out of it. Now,
I like this idea that the ring is not just
a material but a meta material, you know, I mean,
which it would makes perfect sense. And this is the
product of a being that's studied at the at the
Forge of the Gods. So you know, therefore, like we're
you know, we're trying to limit him and his abilities
(38:51):
based on you know, medieval or even modern levels of
of of metallurgical power and knowledge. Right, we're thinking about
him as like sort of a magical smith. Maybe instead
we should be thinking about him as some kind of
material scientists. Uh so, yeah, I was looking at one
paper dealing with the melting point of graphing, and I
(39:12):
was wondering, what that is. It's really high. Uh, it was.
So this was in physical chemistry chemical physics. I don't
know if that's a double name. That was the journal
by Gans, Gans Yang and Dornfield in called the initial
Stages of Melting of graphing between four thousand K and
six thousand K. That's really hot. The authors say graphing
(39:33):
has one of the highest melting points of any known substance. Basically,
they they use these models to say, okay, what would
it look like if you heat it up graphing to
these temperatures for these lengths of time? And uh. They
found that you could heat graphing up for a certain
amount of time to four thousand, five hundred degrees kelvin,
which is really hot, and it still wouldn't melt. It
(39:55):
would just sort of it would It would still be freestanding.
And they said on five thousand degrees kelvin the system
would start to melt. Five thousand degrees kelvin is roughly
forty s celsius or eight hundred fahrenheit. That's is that
hotter than any of the other stuff we looked at. Yeah,
that's that's pretty hot. Okay, So the surface of the
(40:15):
Sun that roughly five thousand, eight hundred degrees kelvin could
probably melt this form of graphine, But a normal volcano
wouldn't be enough to melt the graphine one ring. So
is Mount Doom hotter than the surface of the Sun
or their special properties involved here? No, but this would
this would make me come back to the idea that
at least with the problem that it's forging. What if
(40:37):
Sauron had to go to the volcano, not to forge
it at the shores of the volcanic lake, but like
descended to the center of the planet where you would
have temperatures that would be you know, on par with
the surface of the Sun. As for them destroying it
by casting it into the volcano, well that's that's where
you end up in a problematic area again, because if
that's the case, if it needs to reach the center
(40:59):
of the plant it to be destroyed, well, then that
means the the end of the Lord of the Rings
is not an end at all, and that the dark
Lord was never defeated, and is is you know, destined
to return time and time again the end question mark No,
this is a perfect explanation for why the end of
the third movie went on for seven hours. They were
(41:20):
waiting for the ring to sink sink low enough to
really get hot enough to melt under all that pressure. Yeah,
another main problem with graphine. I should say, oh, I
already mentioned this. It's it's so the problem is that
it's it's hard to manufacture large amounts of it. But
I don't know if that would be a problem for Saron,
because what if he just needed enough for one little
hobbit finger sized ring. That's true though of course when
(41:42):
he's a when he's the Dark Lord, he's somewhat bigger
in it and it still fits around his finger. That's
a good question. I was wondering about this very thing.
How does the ring fit a hobbit finger just fine,
but also fit the fingers of much larger creatures just
as well. I mean, may they address that? They and
it's just magic. That's what magical rings do. One size
(42:03):
fits all. Um. I don't know. I mean you could,
I guess you could go really sci fi crazy and say, well,
the ring is actually composed out of like nano robotic
material that is you know, these these tiny nanobots that
that fused together and carry out all these various processes
to you know, to to do all the things that
the Ring does. But I don't know at that point,
(42:24):
you're really you're really busting the magic out of it.
I like, I like the idea of keeping some level
of magic in the Ring and not not describing it
all the way. Nope, you already ruined it. The Ring
is nanobots. That's what it is now and forevermore. All right,
So there you have it. Um, is one of those
episodes where I guess we don't really have a conclusive answer,
and you know, north should we. But hopefully we've given
(42:46):
some giving you some food for thought and uh, and
also provided an excuse and a means of of discussing
you know, some of the temperatures and melting points involved here. Um.
If if we'd love to hear from anyone out there
who is you know, a big Tolkien fan or someone
who is you know, certainly more experienced than us with
with the use of forges, with with some of these materials. Uh.
(43:10):
You know, we'd love to get your thoughts on it
as well. Uh. And for that matter, are there other
Tolkien related topics you'd like us to to tease apart.
I think I wrote a piece for how Stuff Works
years ago about Hobbit metabolism, which which actually they're like,
there were There were at least a couple of papers
I was able to cite for their article where people
(43:32):
are like, Okay, let's see how much I can breakfast?
How much does the Hobbit eat? And then and so forth?
So I look that up. It's on how Stuff Works
dot com. In the meantime, if you want more episodes
of stuff to blow your mind, he don't over the
Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership.
That's where you'll find them all. And if you're interested
in uh, you know, others, let's say, not magical inventions,
(43:54):
but more mundane but equally amazing inventions, check out our
other podcast, Invention. You can find it at invention pod
dot com. And you can find both shows wherever you
get your podcast. Wherever you do get it, just make
sure you rate and review because that really helps us
out in the long run. Huge thanks to our producers
uh Seth Nicholas Johnson, and Maya Cole. If you would
(44:15):
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
or just to say hello. You can email us at contact.
That's Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radios. How
(44:35):
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