Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2016 August 13

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August 13

Mithril

Is it possible that mithril, as described in Lord of the Rings, is actually titanium or one of its alloys or compounds? For reference purposes, here are the properties of mithril: "It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass... light and yet harder than tempered steel... its beauty was like to that of common silver, but... did not tarnish or grow dim." Cf. the properties of titanium (from the article): "silver color, low density, and high strength... highly resistant to corrosion... highest strength-to-density ratio of any metallic element... as strong as some steels, but less dense... quite ductile... lustrous... tensile strength of over 1400 MPa... slow to react with air and water at ambient temperatures... excellent resistance to corrosion, almost equivalent to platinum." What do you think about this hypothesis? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 03:02, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Maybe we need to pull out a copy of the Silmarillion to be sure of the details, but I recollect that mithril glows blue in the presence of orcs... or at least, can be made to glow blue. To my knowledge, titanium does not exhibit this property.

It is probably best not to over-exert your intellectual efforts trying to bring concordance between Tolkien's fictional writings and actual facts of scientific metallurgy in the real world.

(If any nerd enthusiast comes along to quibble over whether "first age" Elven blades were actually forged from iron rather than steel or mithril... all I can say is, this isn't going to yield a productive engagement on Wikipedia's science reference desk, but a great place to discuss it might be at the Lord of the Rings wiki article talk page).

Nimur (talk) 03:44, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Radiation from the actinium content? ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 06:14, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Maybe some kind of alloying element which scintillates in the presence of orcs (given that, according to Tolkien, orcs are mutated elves and/or humans, this could be plausible if the mutation was radiation-induced)? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 07:32, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

From the Silmarillion: "all those of the Quendi [elves] who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes." I suppose one could read this as selective breeding with some shades of Lamarckism. Possibly radiation could have been among those "slow arts of cruelty". Normally high doses would result in acute radiation poisoning and death, but it's quite established that Morgoth can keep Elves alive even when normally, they wouldn't stay so. Consider Maedhros, hung by his right wrist on Thangorodrim for an ungodly number of years (depending on which conversion factor you use; Tolkien gave several, ranging from a reasonable but still terrible 9.582 Years of the Sun = 1 Year of the Trees to a horrifying 144:1 ratio). (Since he was captured in YT 1497 and rescued by Fingon in YS 5, the lowest possible estimate is 33.75 years and the highest is 581, which clearly shows that we have passed well beyond the realm of biological plausibility without invoking magic.) And at this point, we've arrived at the inescapable conclusion that this is fundamentally a fantasy series, where magic provides better explanations than science, even if they are rather unsatisfying. Double sharp (talk) 16:00, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

We don't exactly have any orcs to see if titanium glows in their presence. :P Ian.thomson (talk) 16:07, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Titanium (even alloys designed for hardness) is very soft actually. The best way to think of it in relative terms is "better than aluminum." Aluminum is also a ductile, light, and forms a very resistant oxide shell. The main advantage is that it has better strength to weight ratio than steel which makes it ideal for certain narrow applications. Now titanium-nitride is harder than steel, but it's a nonmetallic ceramic (crystal), and so has all the downsides of a ceramic. Honestly the vague description of mithril could be anything from stainless steel to aluminum --Savonneux (talk) 05:56, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Nitriding of the surface layer? (Did dwarves have the technology to do that? They might have -- salt nitriding could in principle be done with medieval technology, in fact this could have been one of the steps in producing Damascus steel. As an aside, Damascus steel might in fact have been Tolkien's inspiration for mithril in the first place -- although the physical properties don't entirely match up, because Damascus steel rusts rather rapidly and mithril doesn't!) 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 07:35, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

In our article on mithril there is a quote that says, "Mithril! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, [italics added] light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim." It is hard to tell for sure but it seems like there is something called mithril, from which it is possible to make something, "light and yet harder than tempered steel" i.e. pure mithril, whatever it is, is soft enough to be beaten like copper. Mind you, pure titanium doesn't seem that soft to me---but perhaps these figures are for the heat treated form. The Encyclopedia of the Chemical Elements by Hampel (1968, p. 735) gives it a Vickers hardness of only 80–100 which is quite low. Sandbh (talk) 07:54, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

The thing about being "beaten like copper" sounds like it's ductile, and perhaps alloyed to become harder. This actually reminds me more of aluminum, which was indeed in former times quite a rare and precious metal, and actually is used for armor by some reenactors. [1][2] This said, somewhat mysteriously, the descriptions given there make it sound like it is not really very good as armor. I would have thought there'd be a way to alloy it for hardness and strength, and to use appropriate amounts still well lighter than steel, but one issue is that commercial workers have some reason to prefer working with a simpler and more ductile material. I don't know if its potential has really been explored in this context, simply due to historical accident.

But with weapons there's a more fundamental problem, which is how do you do damage to someone with an ultra light sword? But I don't know if Tolkien even wrote about mithril swords. Wnt (talk) 13:18, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Swords mainly work by cutting or slicing, and you generally want the balance point to be close to the hilt (for speed and accuracy of movement). You don't use the weight of the blade to hack your way through things as you would with an axe. I don't know if there is a lower limit on the weight, below which a sword becomes ineffective, but a light sword isn't automatically a bad thing. Iapetus (talk) 13:35, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

This is an absurd discussion. Tolkien was not a metallurgist, and he certainly didn't research the material properties of different metals before writing that passage. He just made up those properties. Arguing about whether mithril is "really" titanium is like arguing about what specific trees Huck Finn's raft was made from. If it's not mentioned in the book, there's no answer. CodeTalker (talk) 14:36, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Shire Post Mint, maker of fantasy coins, uses niobium and tantalum to represent mithril. Both are very resistant to corrosion, tantalum spectacularly so. And indeed niobium is used in high-temperature stainless steels. But I do not think pure niobium or tantalum metal could have been isolated with mediæval technology. We should also not forget that tantalum is very dense (and niobium is still about as dense as iron), and that both metals are quite hard and could hardly be beaten like copper. Double sharp (talk) 15:46, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

• Coincidentally, I just finished rereading the Quenta Simarillion, pausing at the Akallabeth. It is not mentioned anywhere in the first age nor in the entire 1977 volume's index, although it seems to have been known of. The Western gate of Moria had letters carved in mithril in the second age as the Rings of Power were made. Mithril does not glow blue at the presence orcs; Bilbo's mail did not. And it is not mentioned until the LotR, where it is mentioned that veins of it are found in Moria.

It was apparently also found or known of in Numenor, but our article attributes this to a posthumously published work.

Given there is only speech of veins, not ore or alloying, it seems clear Tolkien thought of this as some sort of precious native metal. Given its description contradicts the properties of all known elements, perhaps Tolkien had in mind a sort of eka-platinum. Perhaps it will be found on the island of stability. μηδείς (talk) 00:51, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

In answer to @Wnt:, I do not believe any mithril swords are ever mentioned, and surely if any had been made, Anduril would have been one. μηδείς (talk) 01:02, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Eka-platinum could hardly be "light": our darmstadtium article predicts for it a density of 34.8 g/cm³, much higher than that of any known element. Double sharp (talk) 03:17, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

A very fine mesh of a very dense material might indeed be quite light, as is gold leaf. I suggest someone contact Tolkien and ask him. μηδείς (talk) 17:55, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

"Make of it a metal" sounds like alloying to me; it seems fair to presume the author wanted to use poetic language not too closely tied to non-magical methods. Though this is indeed an absurd discussion, it's worth pointing out that native aluminum really is a thing [3] and was used to make some things in China [4]; there's also the actual history of the brilliant idiot who gave Tiberius a (presumably) aluminum plate [5], which is more moving and tragic than anything Tolkien ever penned. The only challenge we face is figuring out if anybody has gotten together some aerospace-quality material and worked it under optimum conditions to make some decent light chainmail with it that doesn't rip apart when people hit you with a foam sword or even a real one. After that, we can add our chapter to Tolkien's book and call it complete. Wnt (talk) 11:59, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

You haven't used the full quote, Wnt. Your objection that "...make of it a metal..." means make it into a metal from something else is entirely out of context and proves nothing--it's poetic phrasing, not refining an ore or creating an alloy. μηδείς (talk) 17:55, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Something in the vein of eka-platinum is plausible, as long as it was noble and hence could occur naturally. Of course, the pure stuff would be too dense to make into armour so one presumes the dwarves alloyed it with a light metal like beryllium, magnesium or aluminium, to get the mithril used to make armour (noting Be's hardness). Sandbh (talk) 13:08, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, darmstadtium (eka-platinum) has some unsuitable features, such as a half-life of 11 seconds and a weight that would require any alloy to be nearly all aluminum to be lighter than steel. Still, I do wonder what a stable isotope of it would be like. There are a lot of isotopes like that one where the heaviest isotopes recorded are the most stable. Ostensibly this is because people just don't know what to collide to create them (curve of binding energy) but I do wonder if they are simply being kept secret because you could use them to make mininukes the size of a mustard seed or something. (Californium has been suggested as a source of nuclear hand grenades, and this is heavier) To me though, the idea of mithril as aluminum is most interesting because just a hundred years before Tolkien wrote his story, aluminum really was a tremendously rare and precious metal, something worth using as a shining cap for the Washington Monument, used as eating utensils for the most honored royalty while lesser lights ate with forks of gold. Perhaps Tolkien was able to see aluminum through these unjaded eyes, and should inspire us to do the same. The poor would not be so poor if we did not allow a bullying sentiment prevalent in society to convince us that everything available to the common man is crappy and worthless. Wnt (talk) 16:47, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

An issue with aluminium (and with titanium) is that it's too reactive to occur in an uncombined form. The oxide and silicate ores that it occurs in are like rocks---nothing like Tolkein's description of something that could be beaten like copper. OTOH an alloy of 10% eka-Pt and 90% beryllium might have a density of about 60% that of steel (presuming the existence of a long-lived isotope of eka-Pt). Sandbh (talk) 02:06, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

@Sandbh: The reference I had after "native aluminum" above begins, "Although native aluminum (Al°) has been reported to occur in various geological settings for more than 20 locations but its mechanism of formation still remains to be elucidated." A lot of really unexpected things happen in geology even when gods and dragons stay out of it. Wnt (talk) 02:26, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you User:Wnt. Yes, I read the reference but I thought "too rare" to be feasible, completely overlooking the "unexpected things happening" factor, but not the need to assume the existence of a stable form of eka-Pt. Another concern about Al is that the untreated form has a dull appearance due to the presence of a film of aluminium oxide. Yet Tolkien said of mithril: 'Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim." Hence my focus on one of the more noble metals. A naturally occurring alloy or inter-metallic compound of Al might work however. If it was light enough the dwarves could work on it to improve its hardness or if it was too heavy they could extract the aluminium, and alloy that with something else. I guess if you allow the presence of otherwise implausible naturally occurring alloys or intermetallic compounds containing at least one of the light structural metals (Be, Mg, Al, Sc, Y, Ti) then a mithril "ore" that can be hammered like copper, and used to make a metal lighter but harder than steel, becomes plausible. Inter-metallic compounds are normally brittle however ductile intermetallics were discovered not so long ago. And there is this article speculating that mithril is the intermetallic compound yttrium silver. It's density of nearly 7.4 gm/cm³ would be too high but that of yttrium is only 4.47. Sandbh (talk) 04:26, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

It's worth noting that rarity may not actually be a valid objection here, because mithril was supposed to only occur in Moria (and in faraway Númenor, but that was destroyed at the end of the Second Age). Maybe Moria had mud volcanoes? Double sharp (talk) 05:37, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

• What do you think about this hypothesis? Hate to answer a question with a question, but do you realise that mithril is fictional? The films weren't documentaries, you know. --Shirt58 (talk) 06:58, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Actually I personally find it really amusing that this unanswerable question has so many answers, and that it may say a lot more about us than the OP...taking this, naturally, as good-natured self-deprecation. Double sharp (talk) 02:33, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Sure I do, but having the analytical mind that I do, I just can't help relating fiction to the real world -- in fact, I had even pondered the question whether the poisoned knife with which the Ringwraith stabs Frodo during the battle at Weathertop actually contained tetradoxin (my conclusion was negative because the symptoms don't quite match up, but it could have been something similar). 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 07:23, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Given that we use the word "iron" to refer to pure iron, and to several of its alloys, it seems plausible that Tolkien and his characters may use "mithril" to refer to the pure, native, easily-worked form, and to much harder/stronger alloys. Iapetus (talk) 13:40, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's good. Like mithril aluminium pots and pans, which are actually made of aluminium alloys. Sandbh (talk) 01:51, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Chemistry World (August 2016, p. 52) mentions an alloy of rubidium (density 1.5 gm/cm³) and platinum, which is forbidden by Miedema's theory of alloy formation. According to this theory such an alloy, "shouldn't be possible, because the two metals have very different charge densities. But pressures above 12 GPa force a rubidium electron to move to a different orbital.'The charge density increases dramatically, and the the conditions are there for them to alloy'… The alloy then remained stable on returning to atmospheric pressure." I expect such an alloy would be stucturally weak and, if it had too much Rb, might "rust" but it does perhaps show that our own world has no shortage of unexpected things, even without the presence of gods and dragons, as noted by User:Wnt. — Sandbh (talk) 22:16, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Further to my earlier answer about mithril being an inter metallic ore, I would tend to rule out, at this stage, Be, Mg and Ti, because AFIK these metals don't form any malleable compounds, not to mention the melting points of Mg (605 C) and aluminium (660 C) seem to be too low to do justice to the metal Tolkien had in mind. That just leaves Sc and Y. Now if, Y can form malleable intermetallic compounds perhaps Sc, which is in the same periodic table group, could too. And it has a density of only 3 gm/cm³, which is about 38% that of steel. Sandbh (talk) 04:51, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Here's a link to the article Sandbh mentions. Double sharp (talk) 04:41, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Another argument against beryllium would be its Victorian-novel-disease effects on the miners... Double sharp (talk) 05:39, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Tolkien vs. Technology

The assumption made several places above that Tolkien's universe is somehow related to medieval technology is an interesting one. It seems that way when you read the books (swords and horse-drawn vehicles everywhere, computers and aircraft not so much) but on closer inspection, you find that only the forces of evil embrace technology. We mention this at Themes of The Lord of the Rings#Technophobia. and it has been covered by The Atlantic, The New York Review of books, and Salon.

Then there is the racial purity...

In Middle Earth, the "good" races (Humans, Elves, Hobbits and Dwarves -- all light-skinned) are strictly segregated and your race pretty much determines your behavior. The evil races (Orcs and Trolls -- both dark-skinned) are not segregated. Racial mixing among the "good" races is discouraged. One must remember that these were different times, and many people in Tolkien's time believed in the inherent superiority light-skinned races over dark-skinned races. As an interesting contrast, in the real medieval Europe it appears that most people thought that it is your religion that is important, not the color of your skin. This may be because of a lack of people with different skin colors, though.

Contrast this with the world of Harry Potter, where an obsession with racial purity and fear of Wizards interbreeding with Muggles is found among the "evil" characters such as the Malfoy family. I would argue that Rowling, like Tolkien, is simply reflecting the dominant themes of the culture she lives in, probably without even thinking about it. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:49, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Are you sure you aren't projecting your thoughts into the books? I'm fairly sure Tolkien never described the skin color of the various races in his books. The movie makers obviously made a choice there - but I don't think Tolkien did. Same deal with Harry Potter, I don't think skin color is mentioned in the books - but obviously the movie makers had to make decisions. SteveBaker (talk) 03:43, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Tolkien's writing are often quite literally a battle of good vs. evil. In many cases, that evil is directly associated with black colors and darkness, while the good guys get white colors and light. Tolkien doesn't literally say "all elves are white", but every elf he does describe is some variation of fair skinned. Similarly, most of the "good" humans are described as light skinned, while the human allies of the evil lord Sauron are said to be dark skinned. The question of latent and/or explicit racism in Tolkien's writing has been widely discussed.[6][7][8][9] Some feel Tolkien's writing are quite explicitly racist while others feel such charges are exaggerated and/or fail to consider the evolution of racial attitudes in the later works. Dragons flight (talk) 04:36, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

What difference does it make? Also, how did this change from metallurgy to racial issues? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 07:17, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Because Guy Macon started a new question related to racial issues in Tolkien and Harry Potter. Dragons flight (talk) 11:25, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Regarding race: you could make the opposite argument that the "segregation" between Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Men is portrayed as a bad thing, and a result of a combination of prejudice, and deliberate incitement by Sauron in order to promote disunity. Likewise, human vs. human racism (e.g. Rohan vs. the Dunlanders and the Drúedain) was shown to be unjust, and to the advantage of the forces of evil. Iapetus (talk) 13:53, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

See Haradrim for Tolkein's bad-guys-of-colour. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Alansplodge (talk) 18:11, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

It should be noted that, aside from whether Tolkien had unfavorable attitudes toward the darker-skinned races consistent with those of other British of his time, he was definitely not "anti-Semitic", but admired the Jews. (I don't like the term "anti-Semitism" for anti-Jewishness because in modern times Arabs, who are themselves Semitic, are often anti-Jewish.) (In this respect, perhaps his outlook foreshadowed that of Vatican 2 and John Paul II in changing the attitude of Catholics toward Jews.) Robert McClenon (talk) 18:46, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

True -- in fact, the Jews were in many ways an inspiration for the Dwarves! And to get back on topic, Tolkien also suggested (but did not directly state) that the Dwarves also embraced technology, at least in the areas of mining and metallurgy -- so he may not have been as technophobic as some of you believe! (In fact, I believe he opposed not industrialization per se, but the kind of uncontrolled, in-your-face industrialization which took place in England, and the widespread destruction of natural habitat which resulted -- so his views were not so much "no industry anywhere", but more like "industrialization is fine, as long as it's kept out of the way".) 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 01:28, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Matter at the beginning of the universe

Why people are so confused about the beginning. I think that was a statistical incident. I think that universe came out as matter because it was in a decision making situation between matter and anti-matter (like head and tail). If universe was so dense, it may have been only given one chance - that is its chance of matter/ anti matter creation may be only one. If great crunch theory is correct, then universe may alternate between matter and anti matter, making the whole probability 1 is to 1 if large number of big bangs are counted. Is my thinking correct/ incorrect/ good/ bad?--G.Kiruthikan (talk) 09:34, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

We have a pathetic redirect to a section on the topic: Matter-antimatter asymmetry, and also another article: Baryogenesis. Also look at Multiverse. But this is not a discussion forum to discuss your idea. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 13:01, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

The main problem with your idea is that there was no one "coin flip". Baryogenesis begins when there is enough energy in the universe to create protons and antiprotons in immense numbers from nothing (but the energy, that is; it's the opposite process of particle and antiparticle colliding to produce energy). So there was, at that point, a quite equal ratio between a huge number of each type everywhere throughout space. And we now can look out 13.7 billion years in any given direction, which means if I understand correctly that we see patches of universe all over the place that had to settle whether to be dominated by protons or antiprotons during a rather short transition of history during which they did not even have time to look at each other via the propagation of light. (Though we can't actually see back to the baryogenesis era itself, we can see patches of universe which, like ours, have been through it) Yet there are no borders where matter and anti-matter collide anywhere we look. So that means it's not a statistical effect, but something which occurred pretty much uniformly, everywhere in space, all at the same time as the matter cooled to the point where there weren't any extra antiprotons available from spontaneous pair creation. This implies an asymmetric physical law. Wnt (talk) 13:24, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

People are confused about it, and some try to explain how could a A Universe from Nothing be created. , It might have a couple of good points, although neither physicists nor philosophers liked the book. (I am not saying that philosophers have anything to say about it, in general, when philosophers talk about big topics like creation of the universe, consciousness, time, or neurology, they just appear to be mad drunken people).Llaanngg (talk) 22:12, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

blastophore

Defined as "That portion of the spermatospore which is not converted into spermatoblasts, but carries them." Is there a modern synonym for this term? DTLHS (talk) 19:56, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Our article primitive groove uses this term, mostly because it is a pathetic sentence cribbed from a century-old encyclopedia. I am always wary when I start talking about embryology, because without putting a great deal of effort remembering my stuff it's easy to say something stupid. It's hard to track this down quickly because a lot of sources, whether explicitly copied from Wikipedia or not, seem to use this sentence verbatim. PubMed gets a whole six hits for "primitive groove", which I ought to read later; "blastophore" gets one hit that is about a parasite and clearly not relevant. But you can see a picture here to get you started on the broader terms. There's some serious editing to be done here, for those with the patience (and preferably, a big university library with an archeological-grade collection of old Nature issues). Wnt (talk) 12:59, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Van Gogh, Tchaikovsky: all bipolar?

How crazy is it to label people who are long dead as bipolar (or whatever)? That's from the bestseller Touched with Fire. Llaanngg (talk) 22:44, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, you label them as "long dead", which, I think, falls under "whatever" ;-). Seriously, though, while a diagnosis will be harder without personal contact, it's not impossible to diagnose people via contemporary reports and descriptions, and analysis of their own writings. The author of "Touched with Fire" apparently is a bona-fide expert on the topic, and the book was, going by this review in the New England Journal of Medicine, well received. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:11, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

It's also in vogue to label people as being autistic, or somewhere on the spectrum, at least. Einstein and Jefferson are two favourites. The people making those claims are sometimes schooled in the relevant field(s), but it does tend to fly in the face of the concept that detailed personal examination is required to meaningfully perform medical diagnoses. Isn't it funny how, when there's a book to write, it turns out that diagnosing people is so very easy? Matt Deres (talk) 14:17, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

I think there is a significant difference between finding the historically most likely case and a medical diagnosis that follows a modern standard of care. Neither Jefferson nor Van Gogh are likely to sue for libel or malpractice. And no, I'm not excusing reckless popular literature speculation... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:33, 15 August 2016 (UTC)