September 19, 2020 • 46 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 artefact in J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy series and how it relates to real-life metallurgy. (Originally published 9/19/2019)
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's
Saturday Vault time, folks. Uh. This episode originally published on
September nineteen nineteen, and it is about the One Ring.
Is this the one where we talk about the metallurgy
of the One Ring? Yeah, we we break down, well, okay,
given the properties that are described in in the books,
(00:27):
what could the One Ring have potentially been about? So yeah,
it's a it's a way of making a metallurgical episode
a whole lot of fun and and at times I
think humorous. And the other cool thing is, since you
know we're re running this episode on the nineteen uh,
they of coming twenty two is going to be Hobbit Day,
which is a holiday that has been invented by Tolkien fans.
(00:52):
So that's exciting. This will help you get ready for
Hobbit Day. And hey, maybe maybe we'll have a Hobbit
Day episode. I don't know yet. We're recording this allD
intro like a month or two ahead of time, but
I think we might be able to do it. We'll see,
you'll find out on They all will be revealed three
(01:15):
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, one
ring to find them, one ring to bring them all,
(01:37):
and in the darkness, find them in the Land of Mordor,
where the Shadows lie. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
A production of I Heart Radios has to work. Hey,
(01:59):
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,
(02:21):
pretty much. I mean, 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
(02:42):
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 Ring yet? Yeah? Yeah,
he kind of got a little bored with the opening,
(03:03):
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 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 the task of
applying real world science to the One Ring and seeing
(03:24):
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
(03:46):
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
(04:07):
got to be one of the like ultimate examples of
a fantasy mcguffin. You know, an object that that a
plot can be built around that. There are a lot
of these in the 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
(04:28):
be managed, 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
(04:50):
it has 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
to 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 ring. Um like rings are used to to signify,
(05:14):
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
of course, there's the super Bowl ring, right, which I mean,
really it is as silly as the super Bowl ring
(05:36):
may be, it is it is you know, it is
drawing from this lineage of the ring as the symbol
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, the
Ring cycle, etcetera. Another token note I want to make
is I do want to drive home. Even though Joe
(05:58):
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 detail, right, I mean, it's happened before uh Inland. Likewise,
we may not hit all the token pronunciations. This I
(06:18):
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 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 rereading some segments of Tolkien's
(06:39):
original work, but also from rereading segments from the Token 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 Ring was forged in the year sixteen hundred
(07:02):
of the second Age of the Sun by Sauron, forged
within the active volcano Mount Doom in the land of
word 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, in the guise of an atter, the giver
(07:25):
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 of the of the of the world.
(07:46):
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, the humans, and so he gives them these
(08:07):
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 trap door
in the back of the code, which is that he's
got wondering that gives him power over all the other
(08:30):
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, is
from the end the deceiver, to the trickster, to the
to the warlord, to the seeker. So his fair form
is destroyed in the Fall of New Maniore and he
arises again as this dark lord in black armor. This
(08:53):
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. You 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 Ring was lost, but Saron
did not perish because the One Ring still existed, and
(09:14):
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 horr crux for Saaron. I suppose
so in his in his reincarnated form, without a body,
he depends on this ring, or else he cannot survive, right,
(09:35):
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 by the only
known means, casting it back into the volcanic fires from
(09:55):
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 sorcerer thing. Um. Now, we 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
(10:19):
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 he just
swings his axe at the at 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.
(10:39):
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 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,
(11:01):
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 dent in it. It cannot be
unmade by your hands or by mine. Your small fire,
of course, would not melt even ordinary gold. This ring
(11:22):
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 not now any dragon left on Earth
in which the old fire is hot enough, Nor was
(11:43):
there ever any dragon, not even on Callaghan 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 and the
depths of Oro Dron the fire Mount, to cast the
ring in there, if you really wish to destroy it,
(12:04):
to put it beyond the grasp of the enemy forever.
Thus spoke Gandalf, and Gandalf knew what he was talking about.
By the way, I've always thought Serena 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 eighties Return of the King. Um, so
(12:24):
that you know that that was the token of of
my childhood, and 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 haven't rewatched
the Return of the King in a while, but but
I have rewatched the Hobbit. I that it held up
(12:44):
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,
(13:05):
just real quick. Not that it's very important to what
we're going to be talking about for most of 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.
(13:29):
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
(13:50):
existence and 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 Winn saw On
himself wears that he is invisible. But then again, it's
a different matter when you know, the dark Lord himself
(14:12):
wears the ring, as opposed to when 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 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, one note
(14:36):
again about the sort of the origins of saar On
is that in his like previous life, you know, it's
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 fords, like a Festus. So you
(14:57):
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 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 know
(15:21):
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 no, and what I 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
(15:41):
of the story that 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 which is a wonderful treatment idea.
(16:04):
I haven't read it, but it's a wonderful idea because
you see that in plenty of like in plenty of
myths 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.
So so yeah, there's like that take. But here's the
(16:25):
take I want now, like the Arthur C. Clark version
of 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,
let's get into I guess some of the chemistry here. Um,
so let's just start by talking about things you could
(16:48):
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 to take
it back to the volcano where it was made. That's
the only thing that will destroy it. Right. In terms
of fire sources, Gandalf says, fireplace isn't going to cut it.
(17:09):
A 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
(17:30):
match up. 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, definitely, it's a full
message board, but its it lists an average fireplaces being
somewhere between uh one thousand, two hundred degrees to d
(17:51):
degrees fahrenheit. I've also seen it as high as sixteen
hundred um again for the hottest part of the fire,
where Froto 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 okay? Uh?
And And to clarify there, I guess this doesn't really
(18:12):
matter for the episode. But that's another thing about 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 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,
(18:34):
I'm not sure about that, 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 are not as hot.
And I was just say, they're just as hot as
(18:55):
any fireplace. It's standard, you know, I mean it's an
open fireplace. Now, let's u sit. None of 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
(19:17):
as a medieval world. They're not in some 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 tempts in
Europe were not quite that high. So I was looking
(19:38):
around for a source on this, and I 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 smelters in Europe
(20:01):
could reach average temperatures of about seven hundred degrees celsius
and uh, that would be one thousand two d degrees fahrenheit.
And he continues. Now, pure iron has a very high
melting point, about one thousand, five thirty degrees celsius, and
that would be two thousand, seven eighty six degrees fahrenheit.
(20:22):
So when the newly formed mass of 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 thousand, two
(20:45):
hundred degrees 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
(21:07):
hammer the cuss out of it. Once it's soft, you
don't have to like reduce it into a liquid that
you pour into a mold or something. Um So. And
then but one of the things that Gandalf mentions two
is you can't just be 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
(21:28):
the ring, I 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 be headed or
completely immolated like there must you must reach a threshold
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, it would kind of
(21:50):
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, that's true.
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
(22:10):
some like like bismuth is a metal that is a
poor thermal conductor. I don't mean to suggest that the
token had in mind that the ring was made out
of bismuth. Of course, bismuth has a has 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
(22:31):
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.
(22:53):
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 furnace? 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 can 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,
(23:15):
maybe it would have been different. No, 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 between one thousand,
(23:37):
eight hundred thirty two degrees fahrenheit and two thousand, one
hundred and ninety two degrees fahrenheit. Um and uh and
that's a specific example of this fountaining magma from Coupe
Bay Anaha um Uh it's a volcano in Hawaii. Uh.
And this is uh basalt magma here, uh, the magma
(23:57):
in the lake. There has been a record to reach
temperatures of one thousand fifty three degrees celsius or two thousand,
one hundred and seven point four degrees fahrenheit, and that
was on January nine, 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 even mind is that the lava,
(24:22):
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 an excellent
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 gonna skip over those because
(24:43):
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. Ryotel. But but these are these
(25:06):
are all gonna have you know, these are gonna be cool.
They're still magma, 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 one hugrees fahrenheit, and the medieval forge temperatures, uh,
you know, are seemingly in the range of seven hundred
(25:28):
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 something
that could not be burned in the dwarf and forge
could still be burned, could be still be melted away
inside of a volcano. Now, if we were talking about
(25:50):
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, Gandalf mentions dragon fire
like nice healthy smog. Dragon fire could have done it.
And if we think of that as being more or
less on par with perhaps a modern blast furnace. Uh,
(26:11):
that would have been like, you know, the three thousand
degrees fahrenheit um than 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 Gandalf's point, because
(26:32):
Smag could have probably done it, but you already killed
off Smog in the first book. 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
leads us to consider all, like all the elements then,
and which ones have a high enough melting point that
(26:53):
they would be beyond the melting abilities of of the
dwarve in furnace but within the milt 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
(27:14):
various elements, there there are elements 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 Mountain Doom,
well unless you assume to the Mountain 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
(27:37):
be uh you know, they could 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 uh 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
(27:57):
gonna be beyond the ability of of Mount Doom to
fully melt, if that's indeed what we have to depend on.
And then you look at other things like 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
(28:19):
and seventy degrees fahrenheit. You know, these are 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
Saron 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
(28:40):
within the volcano, maybe he can he can go to
even greater depths in the earth, and and that's where
the foraging is taking place. You know that, like this
is something that is forged not nearly 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
(29:02):
of different elements, and they're melting points in both celsius
and fahrenheit, which I am I'm going to not read
that entire list because it's 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
(29:25):
all of them are 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
(29:45):
know more they're more 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 are asked. Uh, you know where pure
(30:08):
titanium sort. It sounds great 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 thousand one dgrees fahrenheit or three thousand,
(30:30):
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 alloy replicas of the one Ring
(30:53):
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 shier hearts.
But an interesting thing about about something like tungsten, because
(31:14):
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
a coherent mass by heating without melting. So this could
(31:38):
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? But I
think tungsten is a you know, a reasonable guess. If
(31:59):
we're 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. Alright, we're back.
(32:22):
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 Gimli tries to smash it with his ax,
and you have to assume that since Gimle Gimli's a
he's a tough dude, right, he should be able to
(32:43):
cleave just about any middle earthly material with a swift
blow of his mighty acts. 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 Gimli couldn't smash the ring, John Ree stay
v should be able to smash throing. He I mean,
he brings the solid energy. So whatever that is, I
(33:05):
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
(33:27):
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
(33:49):
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. 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 dense core,
(34:12):
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.
So these leftover star cores display bizarre nuclear chemistry because
(34:36):
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
they combine to form neutrons. And so neutron on stars
(35:00):
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 for a long time it's been a mystery of
astrophysics what exactly the inner layers of a neutron star
(35:22):
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 these strange types of
ultra dense material probably living underneath the outer crust of
neutron stars. And these materials are known as nuclear pasta.
(35:43):
They're named that because in the simulations they sometimes resemble
different pasta shapes. Uh and like these different pasta shapes
would form a different strata of the neutron star. I think,
so you get nuclear spaghetti, you get no key, you
get buka tini or anti spaghetti, and you get lasagna sheets. Now, obviously,
because of the incredible density of this neutron swollen material,
(36:07):
it's probably gonna be hard to cleave it with an AX.
But how strong is it? While I was looking at
one study from eighteen by Kaplan, Schneider, and Horowitz called
Elasticity of nuclear pasta in Physical Review Letters and H
some of this nuclear pasta, they concluded, is probably the
strongest material in the entire universe, ten billion times stronger
(36:29):
than steel. So 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 in orders a magnitude beyond
the ability of a dwarf and AX to to deal with,
or a dwarf in furnace. I would have to say
(36:49):
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
you know, you can't destroy it unless you've got some
kind of magic working in Mount Doom. Obviously it wouldn't
melt in Mountain Doom, right, Yeah, I mean this is
this is another one where it is forcing me to
(37:10):
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
leases power and the dark Lords defeated. But I think
that that threshold probably fall short of actually melting it.
(37:30):
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
depths of a volcano. Yeah. Now, there are a couple
(37:52):
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 it would I assume it would not react well
with the atmosphere of an environment like Middle Earth that
might sort of you know, become a big explosion or something.
But but all you know, just imagine you had a
stable ring made of nuclear pasta. It's probably too heavy
(38:15):
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. I guess that you know, Saon could could
carry it. I mean that he's such a powerful entity.
(38:37):
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, just carbon,
but it's carbon with a special molecular formation. It's a
single layer of hexagonal rings of carbon carbon molecules sucking
(39:00):
with other hexagons at every vertex, and it's one atom
thick but sort of perfect on the molecular level. And
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 future electronics. It's extremely light well at the same
(39:20):
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,
but you don't get a lot out of it. Now,
(39:42):
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 linn him and his abilities
based on you know, medieval or even modern levels of
(40:06):
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
was wondering what that is. It's really high. Uh, it was.
So this was in physical chemistry chemical physics. I don't
(40:29):
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
has one of the highest melting points of any known substance. Basically,
they use these models to say, Okay, what would it
(40:50):
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 and five hundred degrees kelvin,
which is really hot, and it still wouldn't melt. It
would just sort of it would It would still be freestanding.
And they set around five thousand degrees kelvin the system
(41:12):
would start to melt. Five thousand degrees kelvin is roughly
forty seven 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
Sun at roughly five thousand, eight hundred degrees kelvin could
probably melt this form of graphine, But a normal volcano
(41:32):
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
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
(41:55):
have temperatures that would be you know, on par with
the surface of the Sun. As for them to scrowing
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 of the planet 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
(42:16):
Lord was never defeated and 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
waiting for the ring to sink sink low enough to
really get hot enough to melt under all that pressure. Yeah,
(42:36):
and 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, of course
when 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.
(42:59):
How us 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 don't.
It's just magic. That's what magical rings do. One size
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.
(43:24):
That is, you know, the 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, 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,
(43:44):
you already ruined it. The Ring is nanobots. That's what
it is now and forevermore. All right, So there you
have it. It 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 some giving you
some food for thought, and and also provide did an
excuse and a means of discussing, you know, some of
the temperatures and melting points involved here. Um, if if
(44:08):
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,
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
(44:29):
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 the article where people
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
(44:50):
dot com. In the meantime, if you want more episodes
of stuff to blow your mind, I don't know the
stuff to blow your mind dot com that's the mothership.
That's where you'll find them all. And if your interest
it in uh, you know others, let's say, not magical inventions,
but more mundane but equally amazing inventions, check out our
other podcast, Invention. You can find it at invention pod
(45:11):
dot com. And you can find both shows wherever you
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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
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(45:32):
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to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's
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you listen to your favorite shows. Many persisted or pro
Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's
Saturday Vault time, folks. Uh. This episode originally published on
September nineteen nineteen, and it is about the One Ring.
Is this the one where we talk about the metallurgy
of the One Ring? Yeah, we we break down, well, okay,
given the properties that are described in in the books,
(00:27):
what could the One Ring have potentially been about? So yeah,
it's a it's a way of making a metallurgical episode
a whole lot of fun and and at times I
think humorous. And the other cool thing is, since you
know we're re running this episode on the nineteen uh,
they of coming twenty two is going to be Hobbit Day,
which is a holiday that has been invented by Tolkien fans.
(00:52):
So that's exciting. This will help you get ready for
Hobbit Day. And hey, maybe maybe we'll have a Hobbit
Day episode. I don't know yet. We're recording this allD
intro like a month or two ahead of time, but
I think we might be able to do it. We'll see,
you'll find out on They all will be revealed three
(01:15):
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, one
ring to find them, one ring to bring them all,
(01:37):
and in the darkness, find them in the Land of Mordor,
where the Shadows lie. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
A production of I Heart Radios has to work. Hey,
(01:59):
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,
(02:21):
pretty much. I mean, 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
(02:42):
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 Ring yet? Yeah? Yeah,
he kind of got a little bored with the opening,
(03:03):
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 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 the task of
applying real world science to the One Ring and seeing
(03:24):
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
(03:46):
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
(04:07):
got to be one of the like ultimate examples of
a fantasy mcguffin. You know, an object that that a
plot can be built around that. There are a lot
of these in the 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
(04:28):
be managed, 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
(04:50):
it has 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
to 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 ring. Um like rings are used to to signify,
(05:14):
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
of course, there's the super Bowl ring, right, which I mean,
really it is as silly as the super Bowl ring
(05:36):
may be, it is it is you know, it is
drawing from this lineage of the ring as the symbol
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, the
Ring cycle, etcetera. Another token note I want to make
is I do want to drive home. Even though Joe
(05:58):
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 detail, right, I mean, it's happened before uh Inland. Likewise,
we may not hit all the token pronunciations. This I
(06:18):
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 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 rereading some segments of Tolkien's
(06:39):
original work, but also from rereading segments from the Token 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 Ring was forged in the year sixteen hundred
(07:02):
of the second Age of the Sun by Sauron, forged
within the active volcano Mount Doom in the land of
word 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, in the guise of an atter, the giver
(07:25):
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 of the of the of the world.
(07:46):
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, the humans, and so he gives them these
(08:07):
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 trap door
in the back of the code, which is that he's
got wondering that gives him power over all the other
(08:30):
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, is
from the end the deceiver, to the trickster, to the
to the warlord, to the seeker. So his fair form
is destroyed in the Fall of New Maniore and he
arises again as this dark lord in black armor. This
(08:53):
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. You 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 Ring was lost, but Saron
did not perish because the One Ring still existed, and
(09:14):
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 horr crux for Saaron. I suppose
so in his in his reincarnated form, without a body,
he depends on this ring, or else he cannot survive, right,
(09:35):
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 by the only
known means, casting it back into the volcanic fires from
(09:55):
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 sorcerer thing. Um. Now, we 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
(10:19):
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 he just
swings his axe at the at 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.
(10:39):
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 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,
(11:01):
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 dent in it. It cannot be
unmade by your hands or by mine. Your small fire,
of course, would not melt even ordinary gold. This ring
(11:22):
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 not now any dragon left on Earth
in which the old fire is hot enough, Nor was
(11:43):
there ever any dragon, not even on Callaghan 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 and the
depths of Oro Dron the fire Mount, to cast the
ring in there, if you really wish to destroy it,
(12:04):
to put it beyond the grasp of the enemy forever.
Thus spoke Gandalf, and Gandalf knew what he was talking about.
By the way, I've always thought Serena 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 eighties Return of the King. Um, so
(12:24):
that you know that that was the token of of
my childhood, and 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 haven't rewatched
the Return of the King in a while, but but
I have rewatched the Hobbit. I that it held up
(12:44):
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,
(13:05):
just real quick. Not that it's very important to what
we're going to be talking about for most of 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.
(13:29):
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
(13:50):
existence and 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 Winn saw On
himself wears that he is invisible. But then again, it's
a different matter when you know, the dark Lord himself
(14:12):
wears the ring, as opposed to when 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 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, one note
(14:36):
again about the sort of the origins of saar On
is that in his like previous life, you know, it's
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 fords, like a Festus. So you
(14:57):
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 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 know
(15:21):
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 no, and what I 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
(15:41):
of the story that 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 which is a wonderful treatment idea.
(16:04):
I haven't read it, but it's a wonderful idea because
you see that in plenty of like in plenty of
myths 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.
So so yeah, there's like that take. But here's the
(16:25):
take I want now, like the Arthur C. Clark version
of 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,
let's get into I guess some of the chemistry here. Um,
so let's just start by talking about things you could
(16:48):
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 to take
it back to the volcano where it was made. That's
the only thing that will destroy it. Right. In terms
of fire sources, Gandalf says, fireplace isn't going to cut it.
(17:09):
A 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
(17:30):
match up. 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, definitely, it's a full
message board, but its it lists an average fireplaces being
somewhere between uh one thousand, two hundred degrees to d
(17:51):
degrees fahrenheit. I've also seen it as high as sixteen
hundred um again for the hottest part of the fire,
where Froto 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 okay? Uh?
And And to clarify there, I guess this doesn't really
(18:12):
matter for the episode. But that's another thing about 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 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,
(18:34):
I'm not sure about that, 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 are not as hot.
And I was just say, they're just as hot as
(18:55):
any fireplace. It's standard, you know, I mean it's an
open fireplace. Now, let's u sit. None of 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
(19:17):
as a medieval world. They're not in some 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 tempts in
Europe were not quite that high. So I was looking
(19:38):
around for a source on this, and I 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 smelters in Europe
(20:01):
could reach average temperatures of about seven hundred degrees celsius
and uh, that would be one thousand two d degrees fahrenheit.
And he continues. Now, pure iron has a very high
melting point, about one thousand, five thirty degrees celsius, and
that would be two thousand, seven eighty six degrees fahrenheit.
(20:22):
So when the newly formed mass of 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 thousand, two
(20:45):
hundred degrees 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
(21:07):
hammer the cuss out of it. Once it's soft, you
don't have to like reduce it into a liquid that
you pour into a mold or something. Um So. And
then but one of the things that Gandalf mentions two
is you can't just be 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
(21:28):
the ring, I 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 be headed or
completely immolated like there must you must reach a threshold
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, it would kind of
(21:50):
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, that's true.
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
(22:10):
some like like bismuth is a metal that is a
poor thermal conductor. I don't mean to suggest that the
token had in mind that the ring was made out
of bismuth. Of course, bismuth has a has 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
(22:31):
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.
(22:53):
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 furnace? 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 can 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,
(23:15):
maybe it would have been different. No, 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 between one thousand,
(23:37):
eight hundred thirty two degrees fahrenheit and two thousand, one
hundred and ninety two degrees fahrenheit. Um and uh and
that's a specific example of this fountaining magma from Coupe
Bay Anaha um Uh it's a volcano in Hawaii. Uh.
And this is uh basalt magma here, uh, the magma
(23:57):
in the lake. There has been a record to reach
temperatures of one thousand fifty three degrees celsius or two thousand,
one hundred and seven point four degrees fahrenheit, and that
was on January nine, 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 even mind is that the lava,
(24:22):
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 an excellent
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 gonna skip over those because
(24:43):
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. Ryotel. But but these are these
(25:06):
are all gonna have you know, these are gonna be cool.
They're still magma, 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 one hugrees fahrenheit, and the medieval forge temperatures, uh,
you know, are seemingly in the range of seven hundred
(25:28):
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 something
that could not be burned in the dwarf and forge
could still be burned, could be still be melted away
inside of a volcano. Now, if we were talking about
(25:50):
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, Gandalf mentions dragon fire
like nice healthy smog. Dragon fire could have done it.
And if we think of that as being more or
less on par with perhaps a modern blast furnace. Uh,
(26:11):
that would have been like, you know, the three thousand
degrees fahrenheit um than 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 Gandalf's point, because
(26:32):
Smag could have probably done it, but you already killed
off Smog in the first book. 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
leads us to consider all, like all the elements then,
and which ones have a high enough melting point that
(26:53):
they would be beyond the melting abilities of of the
dwarve in furnace but within the milt 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
(27:14):
various elements, there there are elements 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 Mountain Doom,
well unless you assume to the Mountain 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
(27:37):
be uh you know, they could 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 uh 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
(27:57):
gonna be beyond the ability of of Mount Doom to
fully melt, if that's indeed what we have to depend on.
And then you look at other things like 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
(28:19):
and seventy degrees fahrenheit. You know, these are 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
Saron 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
(28:40):
within the volcano, maybe he can he can go to
even greater depths in the earth, and and that's where
the foraging is taking place. You know that, like this
is something that is forged not nearly 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
(29:02):
of different elements, and they're melting points in both celsius
and fahrenheit, which I am I'm going to not read
that entire list because it's 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
(29:25):
all of them are 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
(29:45):
know more they're more 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 are asked. Uh, you know where pure
(30:08):
titanium sort. It sounds great 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 thousand one dgrees fahrenheit or three thousand,
(30:30):
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 alloy replicas of the one Ring
(30:53):
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 shier hearts.
But an interesting thing about about something like tungsten, because
(31:14):
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
a coherent mass by heating without melting. So this could
(31:38):
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? But I
think tungsten is a you know, a reasonable guess. If
(31:59):
we're 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. Alright, we're back.
(32:22):
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 Gimli tries to smash it with his ax,
and you have to assume that since Gimle Gimli's a
he's a tough dude, right, he should be able to
(32:43):
cleave just about any middle earthly material with a swift
blow of his mighty acts. 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 Gimli couldn't smash the ring, John Ree stay
v should be able to smash throing. He I mean,
he brings the solid energy. So whatever that is, I
(33:05):
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
(33:27):
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
(33:49):
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. 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 dense core,
(34:12):
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.
So these leftover star cores display bizarre nuclear chemistry because
(34:36):
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
they combine to form neutrons. And so neutron on stars
(35:00):
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 for a long time it's been a mystery of
astrophysics what exactly the inner layers of a neutron star
(35:22):
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 these strange types of
ultra dense material probably living underneath the outer crust of
neutron stars. And these materials are known as nuclear pasta.
(35:43):
They're named that because in the simulations they sometimes resemble
different pasta shapes. Uh and like these different pasta shapes
would form a different strata of the neutron star. I think,
so you get nuclear spaghetti, you get no key, you
get buka tini or anti spaghetti, and you get lasagna sheets. Now, obviously,
because of the incredible density of this neutron swollen material,
(36:07):
it's probably gonna be hard to cleave it with an AX.
But how strong is it? While I was looking at
one study from eighteen by Kaplan, Schneider, and Horowitz called
Elasticity of nuclear pasta in Physical Review Letters and H
some of this nuclear pasta, they concluded, is probably the
strongest material in the entire universe, ten billion times stronger
(36:29):
than steel. So 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 in orders a magnitude beyond
the ability of a dwarf and AX to to deal with,
or a dwarf in furnace. I would have to say
(36:49):
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
you know, you can't destroy it unless you've got some
kind of magic working in Mount Doom. Obviously it wouldn't
melt in Mountain Doom, right, Yeah, I mean this is
this is another one where it is forcing me to
(37:10):
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
leases power and the dark Lords defeated. But I think
that that threshold probably fall short of actually melting it.
(37:30):
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
depths of a volcano. Yeah. Now, there are a couple
(37:52):
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 it would I assume it would not react well
with the atmosphere of an environment like Middle Earth that
might sort of you know, become a big explosion or something.
But but all you know, just imagine you had a
stable ring made of nuclear pasta. It's probably too heavy
(38:15):
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. I guess that you know, Saon could could
carry it. I mean that he's such a powerful entity.
(38:37):
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, just carbon,
but it's carbon with a special molecular formation. It's a
single layer of hexagonal rings of carbon carbon molecules sucking
(39:00):
with other hexagons at every vertex, and it's one atom
thick but sort of perfect on the molecular level. And
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 future electronics. It's extremely light well at the same
(39:20):
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,
but you don't get a lot out of it. Now,
(39:42):
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 linn him and his abilities
based on you know, medieval or even modern levels of
(40:06):
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
was wondering what that is. It's really high. Uh, it was.
So this was in physical chemistry chemical physics. I don't
(40:29):
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
has one of the highest melting points of any known substance. Basically,
they use these models to say, Okay, what would it
(40:50):
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 and five hundred degrees kelvin,
which is really hot, and it still wouldn't melt. It
would just sort of it would It would still be freestanding.
And they set around five thousand degrees kelvin the system
(41:12):
would start to melt. Five thousand degrees kelvin is roughly
forty seven 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
Sun at roughly five thousand, eight hundred degrees kelvin could
probably melt this form of graphine, But a normal volcano
(41:32):
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
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
(41:55):
have temperatures that would be you know, on par with
the surface of the Sun. As for them to scrowing
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 of the planet 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
(42:16):
Lord was never defeated and 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
waiting for the ring to sink sink low enough to
really get hot enough to melt under all that pressure. Yeah,
(42:36):
and 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, of course
when 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.
(42:59):
How us 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 don't.
It's just magic. That's what magical rings do. One size
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.
(43:24):
That is, you know, the 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, 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,
(43:44):
you already ruined it. The Ring is nanobots. That's what
it is now and forevermore. All right, So there you
have it. It 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 some giving you
some food for thought, and and also provide did an
excuse and a means of discussing, you know, some of
the temperatures and melting points involved here. Um, if if
(44:08):
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,
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
(44:29):
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 the article where people
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
(44:50):
dot com. In the meantime, if you want more episodes
of stuff to blow your mind, I don't know the
stuff to blow your mind dot com that's the mothership.
That's where you'll find them all. And if your interest
it in uh, you know others, let's say, not magical inventions,
but more mundane but equally amazing inventions, check out our
other podcast, Invention. You can find it at invention pod
(45:11):
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
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
(45:32):
contact That's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio
is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Many persisted or pro
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