From the Vault: The One Ring

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. 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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

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 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 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, 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

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 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.

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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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 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.

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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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

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. 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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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

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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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.

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, 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 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 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 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

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

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