Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. We have another vault for you. This is
Speaker 1: going to be part three in our series from last year.
Speaker 1: Originally published five sixteen, twenty twenty four Meteoric Metal and
Speaker 1: Alien Iron, Part three. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And we're back with part three of our series on
Speaker 3: human uses of iron from space. I think we had
Speaker 3: a little interlude there where. On Tuesday of this week
Speaker 3: we ran an unrelated interview, But today we're back to
Speaker 3: finish off the series with Part three. Now, if you
Speaker 3: haven't heard the first two parts yet, you should probably
Speaker 3: go back check those out first, But to do a
Speaker 3: quick recap. In Part one, we focused largely on the
Speaker 3: iron dagger of Tutin Common, a blade found wrapped up
Speaker 3: with the pharotutin Common inside his coffin from before the
Speaker 3: time of large scale smelting of iron in Egypt, and
Speaker 3: we discussed chemical and mineral analysis showing that this dagger
Speaker 3: was almost certainly made out of iron that came not
Speaker 3: from Earth, but from a piece of iron meteorite that
Speaker 3: fell from space. And it turns out that a lot
Speaker 3: of iron artifacts like ambulets, beads, tools, and trinkets. A
Speaker 3: lot of these iron artifacts from before the various regional
Speaker 3: iron ages have this in common. They come from meteorites.
Speaker 3: So ancient peoples were taking alien metal that fell from
Speaker 3: the sky and shaping it to their uses. In Part two,
Speaker 3: we talked about a few more specific artifacts believed to
Speaker 3: be made from meteorite iron, such as the Shang Dynasty
Speaker 3: axes from ancient China, and a meteorite iron sculpture known
Speaker 3: as the Iron Man or sometimes in the media as
Speaker 3: the Space Buddha, which was at one point alleged to
Speaker 3: be a Tibetan depiction of a divine figure in Buddhism
Speaker 3: known as vice Ravana, but according to some experts in
Speaker 3: Buddhist art, was actually a twentieth century European design, amounting
Speaker 3: to a forgery or at least a crude imitation of
Speaker 3: Tibetan imagery. And then I ended up getting into some
Speaker 3: of the speculation about who could have actually made this sculpture,
Speaker 3: which is a somewhat wild story if true, Big if true.
Speaker 3: We also talked about the history of knowledge that meteorites
Speaker 3: come from space. So it took scientists of the European
Speaker 3: Enlightenment until around the beginning of the nineteenth century to
Speaker 3: really agree on this, But there is some evidence that
Speaker 3: people in ancient China, in ancient Egypt and other cultures
Speaker 3: knew that this metal came from above. And some of
Speaker 3: the indications of this are linguistic, for example, in the
Speaker 3: fact that in the ancient Egyptian language there's a convention
Speaker 3: to refer to iron as iron of the sky or
Speaker 3: metal of the sky. And so today we're back to
Speaker 3: talk about more possible uses of meteorite iron in technology
Speaker 3: and artifacts from human history. And you know, one thing
Speaker 3: that's interesting this has sort of come up a little
Speaker 3: so far, is that meteoric iron still retains a strong power,
Speaker 3: a sense of power, and a mystical appeal, even after
Speaker 3: the spread of tools and artifacts made from earth based iron.
Speaker 3: So even after iron as an element becomes common and mundane,
Speaker 3: and you know, it's smelted out of iron ore from
Speaker 3: the earth and we use it to make all kinds
Speaker 3: of things, including including steel products, there's still something undeniably
Speaker 3: appealing and even perhaps mystical about iron from the stars.
Speaker 1: That's right, and that's why in this next section I
Speaker 1: want to get out of the Bronze Age and get
Speaker 1: into the post Bronze Age Islamic world, where we see
Speaker 1: various mentions of what may be meteoric iron. So a
Speaker 1: lot of this is going to concern swords at least
Speaker 1: in the outset here. Swords have of course played a
Speaker 1: significant role in human history and take on various meanings
Speaker 1: across various cultures that use them, which is pretty much
Speaker 1: any culture with access to the prerequisite metals. As we've
Speaker 1: discussed on Stuff to Blow your Mind and the Artifact
Speaker 1: the short form episodes we were on Wednesday before, we
Speaker 1: see sword like weapons in cultures that did not have
Speaker 1: access to the prerequisite metal work, though their functionality is
Speaker 1: ultimately perhaps more comparable to a club. Thinking here about
Speaker 1: you know, particular examples of essentially wooden clubs that are
Speaker 1: that to the untrained eye might look like a sword.
Speaker 1: May even be you may even have bits of stone
Speaker 1: embedded in them, you know, given this the swordlike appearance,
Speaker 1: So there is something like even when you cannot make
Speaker 1: swords because you don't have the prerequisite materials. There is
Speaker 1: something about the form and to the extension of the
Speaker 1: human arm as a weapon that seems to lock up
Speaker 1: in various cultures. At any rate, wherever the sword was known,
Speaker 1: the sword increasingly took on various literal, symbolic, metaphorical meanings.
Speaker 1: And this of course means that swords factor into various
Speaker 1: religious traditions in a number of ways, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: in Christianity, Jesus mentions the sword as a metaphor for conflict,
Speaker 1: and I believe the particular passage is widely interpreted to
Speaker 1: refer to social division rather than armed conflict. But like
Speaker 1: anything in a religious text, people will take it and
Speaker 1: apply whatever meaning they want to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a lot of ways you could read
Speaker 3: I come not to bring peace, but a sword.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now you'll find swords, even flaming swords, and Buddhist
Speaker 1: iconography and Hinduism, and the sword of course also factors
Speaker 1: into Islam. And I bring up these other religious examples
Speaker 1: in part because, based on some of the sources I
Speaker 1: was looking at, it does that there is often a
Speaker 1: Western bias in interpreting sword iconography and references in Islam.
Speaker 1: As more overtly tied to armed conflict than perhaps in
Speaker 1: other religions. This is not to say that the sword
Speaker 1: in Islamic traditions isn't, but as with other cultures, it
Speaker 1: doesn't always refer to armed conflict or violence.
Speaker 3: Could be literal, could be metaphorical exactly so.
Speaker 1: Islamic swords may stand for religious or political authority, they
Speaker 1: may stand for mystical knowledge and more in addition to
Speaker 1: military victory. But moving on to specific swords, there are
Speaker 1: a number of them of note from Islamic history. The
Speaker 1: prophet Muhammad is held to have possessed nine swords during
Speaker 1: his life, and the most famous of which is the
Speaker 1: Dul Fakhari or dual Fakhar, and may be pronouncing this incorrectly.
Speaker 1: If so, I apologize, But the name's meaning is largely uncertain,
Speaker 1: but may relate to concepts of splitting, and is often
Speaker 1: depicted as a wronged, split or double bladed sword. You
Speaker 1: can look up images of various images of the sword
Speaker 1: in iconography, and depending on how it's presented, the blade
Speaker 1: may split near the tip or I've seen examples of
Speaker 1: the blade splitting close to the hilt, so I guess
Speaker 1: it kind of runs the gamut from like the highly
Speaker 1: symbolic to the believable and practical. And again we're talking
Speaker 1: about largely about imagery here. Actual symbolic swords have been produced.
Speaker 1: But the sword in question here, the dual fora car,
Speaker 1: is I think, largely understood to be a mystical and
Speaker 1: or mythological item. The story goes, however, that the prophet
Speaker 1: acquires the sword at the Battle of baut in six
Speaker 1: twenty four, and then ultimately passes the sword onto his
Speaker 1: son in law, Ali, the fourth Caliph now Califf's by
Speaker 1: the way, if you're not familiar, these were the Muslim
Speaker 1: civil and religious rulers who succeeded Muhammad. So the sword
Speaker 1: in question here, the Dulafakar, is strongly associated with Ali.
Speaker 1: There are various legends about his military exploits with this
Speaker 1: mystical weapon and its ability to cut through his enemies.
Speaker 1: Though it is also a symbol of political and spiritual authority.
Speaker 1: It is in many ways said to be the sword
Speaker 1: of swords, as Islamic blades were traditionally inscribed with the
Speaker 1: phrase there is no sword but dul Fokar, and there
Speaker 1: is no hero but Ali.
Speaker 3: Okay, some superlatives right.
Speaker 1: Right, and you can find examples of this. I was
Speaker 1: looking around and like, various museums inevitably have swords of
Speaker 1: Islamic origin that have that do mention the Dulfakar on them,
Speaker 1: So you can find examples of this, perhaps even in
Speaker 1: your own museum within your own region. Now, some say
Speaker 1: that the actual sword in question here, among other relics,
Speaker 1: is currently in the possession of the Tope Copy Museum
Speaker 1: in Turkey. But it also seems that in twelve verse Sheism,
Speaker 1: the sword is believed to be in heaven and or
Speaker 1: in the possession of Muhammad Almabi, the Imam believed to
Speaker 1: return at the end of time. So again there's this
Speaker 1: idea that, again a highly mystical sword that is held
Speaker 1: in tradition to not even be perhaps on this earth anymore.
Speaker 1: Now I say all this to sort of going to
Speaker 1: get into the idea of Islamic swords, but this is
Speaker 1: not the sword that I wanted to talk about in
Speaker 1: connection to today's episode. Like, I've seen no discussion that
Speaker 1: this sword or anything any artifact that is connected to
Speaker 1: this sword containing meteoric iron. And I guess we should
Speaker 1: also clarify that any sword in the possession of beings
Speaker 1: not on this earth any longer cannot be analyzed. However,
Speaker 1: we do see at least some mention of possible meteoric
Speaker 1: iron weapons in Islamic traditions. I'll get to specific example
Speaker 1: in just a second, but you know, we should remember
Speaker 1: that medieval Arab astronomy was extremely advanced prior to the
Speaker 1: rise of Islam in the seventh century. Pre Islamic Arabs
Speaker 1: depended on empirical observations of constellations, and then with the
Speaker 1: rise of Islam we see the emergence of this tradition
Speaker 1: of five daily prayers, prayers that need to be directed
Speaker 1: toward Mecca. And this creates a true incentive based on
Speaker 1: religion for better charting of time and location. Thus, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a reason to focus more on the movements of
Speaker 1: the stars, and this ends up helping to foster a
Speaker 1: more robust cultural understanding of astronomy, drawling upon other traditions
Speaker 1: in the ancient world and building out new knowledge. Now,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I was reading a survey of
Speaker 1: Muslim materials on comets and meteors by David Cook. According
Speaker 1: to Cook, comets and meteors during the for a very
Speaker 1: long time, traditions were not considered astronomical phenomenon. They were
Speaker 1: held to occur within the atmosphere and therefore they were terrestrial,
Speaker 1: so they were largely omitted from astronomical works, while mentions
Speaker 1: would still be found in other forms of literature, especially
Speaker 1: when they were held as portents or lined up with
Speaker 1: important deaths or events, such as the death of the
Speaker 1: Prophet in six thirty two, as well as events in
Speaker 1: the lives of the Third and fourth Caliphs. Now in
Speaker 1: the past, I think this was when I was writing
Speaker 1: for How Stuff Works and I was writing or applying
Speaker 1: some edits to an article that dealt with iron, and
Speaker 1: I remember reading that blades of possible meteoric iron had
Speaker 1: been associated with seventh century Caliphs, and I look back,
Speaker 1: I tried to get into this because I really wanted
Speaker 1: to figure out where is this coming from, what specifically
Speaker 1: is this referring to? What are the sources? And the
Speaker 1: initial source was a nineteen forty one paper published in
Speaker 1: the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
Speaker 1: and Ireland titled the Use of Meteoric Iron by ta Rickard,
Speaker 1: and at one point in the text he discusses the
Speaker 1: possibility that Zeus's thunderbolts were a quote poetic expression for
Speaker 1: the use of meteoric iron, and that later I'm going
Speaker 1: to read a quote here from it. In later times
Speaker 1: we read that Attila, timur Antar and other devastating conquerors
Speaker 1: had swords from heaven. So also the caliphs, whose swords
Speaker 1: were made of the same meteoric material as the Cobbastone
Speaker 1: that lies in the Holy Sanctuary at Mecca. Avajo's, an
Speaker 1: Arab philosopher of the twelfth century, states that excellent swords
Speaker 1: were made from a meteor weighing one hundred pounds that
Speaker 1: fell near Cordoba in Spain. Now, if you've listened to
Speaker 1: the show for a while, you know that we did
Speaker 1: in an episode on the Cobbastone the Blackstone of Mecca
Speaker 1: a while back, probably a few years at this point.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we did cover there
Speaker 1: that maybe wasn't as apparent to the author of this
Speaker 1: paper is that the origins of the Cobbastone are far
Speaker 1: from a settled matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't remember. It's been a while, so I
Speaker 3: don't remember exactly what we concluded there, but it seemed
Speaker 3: like there was still plenty of room for uncertainty there,
Speaker 3: though there were suggestions of reasons for thinking it may
Speaker 3: have been a stone created by an impact of some sort,
Speaker 3: whether it came from above, or maybe whether it was
Speaker 3: created of like one of those types of glasses created
Speaker 3: by impacts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I think ultimately it's just all observational
Speaker 1: because it's a sacred relic. It's not going to be
Speaker 1: scientifically analyzed, which is the case with many relics around
Speaker 1: the world. In getting into this whole business about the sort,
Speaker 1: so that was what I really wanted an answer to,
Speaker 1: and I've got to admit that I was able to
Speaker 1: find out precious little about Islamic swords alleged to have
Speaker 1: been forged from meteoric iron. Rickard here was citing British
Speaker 1: geologists Lazarus Fletcher, who lived eighteen fifty four through nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty one, but rooting around in available texts by this author,
Speaker 1: I didn't really find any answers to my questions either.
Speaker 1: I did consult a couple of sources about the history
Speaker 1: of metallurgy in the region, and it is key to
Speaker 1: note that we've already touched on islam arises after the
Speaker 1: end of the Bronze Age in the Middle East and
Speaker 1: the Islamic world had access to Damascus steel, so any
Speaker 1: meteoric weapons would be largely symbolic and or relics of
Speaker 1: the past, and they clearly had access to what is
Speaker 1: often held up is the best steel of the day.
Speaker 3: Right, steel being a product of iron, So it would
Speaker 3: not be a question like we talked about with the
Speaker 3: King tut example, with this being a product from before
Speaker 3: the regional iron age, from before people before there was
Speaker 3: large scale smelting of iron in the area. There's plenty
Speaker 3: of smelting of iron and production of iron artifacts. These
Speaker 3: would just be iron from a different source in a
Speaker 3: place that was already rich with iron, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, interestingly enough, interestingly enough here, I don't know
Speaker 1: to what extent, or any extent this ends up coloring
Speaker 1: these older writings by Western writers, if this factors into
Speaker 1: the analysis at all. But there is actually a line
Speaker 1: in the Quran fifty seven twenty five that refers to
Speaker 1: iron in a way that is sometimes interpreted as having
Speaker 1: some connection to meteoric iron. I'm going to read the
Speaker 1: passage here. This is of course in translation. Indeed, we
Speaker 1: sent our messengers with clear proofs, and with them we
Speaker 1: sent down the scripture and the balance of justice, so
Speaker 1: that people may administer justice. And we sent down iron
Speaker 1: with its great might, benefits for humanity and means for
Speaker 1: Allah to prove who is willing to stand up for
Speaker 1: him and his messengers without seeing him. Surely Allah is
Speaker 1: all powerful, almighty ah.
Speaker 3: So I imagine some interpretation is hinging there on the
Speaker 3: phrase we sent down iron, with the idea of iron
Speaker 3: somehow coming from above exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was reading paper talk titled Basic Concepts of
Speaker 1: Physics and the Perspective of the Quran by M. M. Karashi.
Speaker 1: This was in a nineteen eighty nine edition of Islamic Studies,
Speaker 1: and the author here rights that quote the implication of
Speaker 1: the words has become fully apparent only through historical investigation
Speaker 1: of the earliest use of meteoric iron. So I could
Speaker 1: be wrong on this end. As always I invite correction
Speaker 1: or clarity, But I believe some commentators argue that these
Speaker 1: lines in the Quran reference on historical understanding of iron
Speaker 1: media rights, you know, perhaps drawing on again as we've
Speaker 1: touched on knowledge that already existed in the ancient world
Speaker 1: in different parts, and to different degrees, that there was
Speaker 1: a connection between iron and Metea rights between iron and
Speaker 1: the sky. Again, it makes perfect sense given everything we've discussed,
Speaker 1: but isn't also also isn't necessarily guaranteed. Some also seem
Speaker 1: to interpret this verse as just stating that iron in
Speaker 1: the earth was a creation of Allah, and consideration of
Speaker 1: meteors doesn't seem to always serve as part of that conversation.
Speaker 1: You know, it was sent down just a way of
Speaker 1: saying it came from God, which you know fair enough,
Speaker 1: you can say anything was sent down. You could, I
Speaker 1: guess you could say a giraffe was sent down, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it actually had a re entry into
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 3: Well, everything in this passage is said to be sent down,
Speaker 3: and the other cases of sent down here don't necessarily
Speaker 3: seem to imply a physical dissent from space.
Speaker 1: Right, So again I invite direction or clarity on these points,
Speaker 1: especially from anyone who has Garonic knowledge and so forth.
Speaker 1: But I did find it interesting that in this passage
Speaker 1: we see a possible reference to meteoric iron, and then
Speaker 1: we also have these other like more perhaps dubious mentions
Speaker 1: in Western ridings about meteoric swords meteoric iron swords that
Speaker 1: were used by the Klobs.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I wanted to begin this next section
Speaker 3: by looking at how big chunks of meteorc iron arrive
Speaker 3: on Earth. Already we've mentioned several examples of meteoroids that
Speaker 3: at some point entered Earth's atmosphere and fragmented or shattered
Speaker 3: in the air, separating into a series of smaller meteorite
Speaker 3: fragments which can be found across an impact field. For example,
Speaker 3: in the last episode, we talked about the Chinga meteorite,
Speaker 3: one piece of which was probably used to make the
Speaker 3: so called space Buddha sculpture that we talked about. And
Speaker 3: while the artistic origins of that sculpture are highly suspect,
Speaker 3: the physical origin are not. Really it does seem to
Speaker 3: be agreed upon that this is a piece of iron meteorite.
Speaker 3: So many fragments of the Chinga meteorite have been found
Speaker 3: in the region of Tuva, which is in southern Siberia,
Speaker 3: since the first recorded discovery by miners in the early
Speaker 3: nineteen hundreds. This scattering of iron meteorite chunks over a
Speaker 3: large area is the result of some original object coming
Speaker 3: apart into pieces somewhere in the atmosphere above roughly ten
Speaker 3: to twenty thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: There are different ways for meteoroids to come apart or
Speaker 3: lose their structural integrity in the atmosphere. In some cases
Speaker 3: they land roughly intact, in some cases they split up
Speaker 3: into some number of smaller pieces from the original, and
Speaker 3: in some cases they basically just explode or vaporize, and
Speaker 3: on the explosion end of the scale, the explosions before
Speaker 3: the meteoroids reach the ground these explode are referred to
Speaker 3: as air bursts. In many such cases, the entire object,
Speaker 3: or nearly the entire object, is burned up or reduced
Speaker 3: to dust in the process. In the case of the
Speaker 3: relatively recent Cheliabinsk meteoroid, which exploded over Russia in February
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen, an asteroid that was originally like twenty meters
Speaker 3: or sixty five feet in diameter when it entered the
Speaker 3: Earth's atmosphere, it exploded a few tens of kilometers above
Speaker 3: the ground. For some reason, I've seen different estimates about
Speaker 3: the altitude. Some say twenty three kilometers up, others say
Speaker 3: thirty kilometers up. But wherever it was, this explosion released
Speaker 3: a huge amount of energy, expressed in the hundreds of
Speaker 3: kilotons of TNT, maybe like four hundred or five hundred
Speaker 3: kilotons of T and T. The explosion way up there,
Speaker 3: damaged thousands of buildings on the ground, blew out glass,
Speaker 3: and sent some fifteen hundred people to the hospital, though
Speaker 3: thankfully no deaths were reported.
Speaker 1: The footage of this, like the ashboard footage that was
Speaker 1: going around, is quite incredible, so if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: definitely seek it out.
Speaker 3: Absolutely that is worth looking at. It is awe inspiring,
Speaker 3: and this is a particularly big air burst in the
Speaker 3: modern era, not of course the biggest that can happen,
Speaker 3: but very big and recent memory, though, I was reading
Speaker 3: if the object had impacted the ground instead of exploding
Speaker 3: high up in the atmosphere, if it had hit the
Speaker 3: ground or exploded lower in the atmosphere, the damage the
Speaker 3: damage could have been much much worse. So in a way,
Speaker 3: the outcome was rather lucky. But despite the fact that
Speaker 3: the Cheliubinsk metioroid entered the atmosphere as an asteroid the
Speaker 3: size of a house, I've read estimates that well below
Speaker 3: one percent of its mass reached the ground in the
Speaker 3: form of solid meteorites. Again, this is something where I've
Speaker 3: seen different numbers on the estimate. I've read like zero
Speaker 3: point one percent of its mass or like zero point
Speaker 3: zero five percent of its mass. Some very small percent
Speaker 3: of its mass actually reached the ground in solid chunks,
Speaker 3: and the rest evaporated or was turned to dust as
Speaker 3: the object broke apart and burned up. So this got
Speaker 3: me wondering what actually causes a fast moving meteoroid to
Speaker 3: just blow up or even vaporize like that. A key
Speaker 3: factor is speed. So the original object, which might be
Speaker 3: a chunk of asteroid or comet material at least a
Speaker 3: few meters in diameter, maybe up to tens of meters,
Speaker 3: typically enters Earth's atmosphere at great speed. According to the
Speaker 3: American meteor Society, meteors tend to enter the atmosphere going
Speaker 3: anywhere between eleven kilometers per second and seventy two kilometers
Speaker 3: per second. And there's actually an interesting fact concerning this
Speaker 3: variability that you might not think about it first. The
Speaker 3: speed with which a meteor enters Earth's atmosphere depends not
Speaker 3: only on the speed of the comet or the asteroid's
Speaker 3: orbit relative to the Sun, so it has its own
Speaker 3: intrinsic speed as it's orbiting the Sun, but it's also
Speaker 3: affected by the movement of the Earth, which is simultaneously
Speaker 3: orbiting the Sun at about thirty kilometers per second, and
Speaker 3: is also though this is less important, rotating at about
Speaker 3: one thy six hundred and seventy kilometers per hour. Of course,
Speaker 3: speed is always, you know, it's relative to an observer.
Speaker 3: So even though we use language like the speed at
Speaker 3: which a meteor enters our atmosphere, that could give the
Speaker 3: false impression that our atmosphere is stationary and the media
Speaker 3: is moving, in reality, both are moving, and they're moving
Speaker 3: in their own directions, and so the speed of entry
Speaker 3: is determined by the relative velocity of both objects to
Speaker 3: each other, you know. So it could be kind of
Speaker 3: trying to catch up with the part of the atmosphere
Speaker 3: it hits, or it could be like slamming into more
Speaker 3: kind of a head on kind of collision with the
Speaker 3: part of the atmosphere it hits. And then of course,
Speaker 3: other things about other things about the way a meteor
Speaker 3: enters the atmosphere will determine, will determine its ultimate fail
Speaker 3: whether it burns up, what the resistance is, and so
Speaker 3: that would include things like the angle of entry anyway,
Speaker 3: whatever the speed is. At that incredible speed, the air
Speaker 3: directly in front of the meteoroid once it enters the
Speaker 3: atmosphere becomes greatly compressed. It's squeezing a lot of atmospheric
Speaker 3: gas in its path into a very small space, very rapidly.
Speaker 3: So you can imagine it kind of like a like
Speaker 3: a pneumatic piston that is moving so fast it doesn't
Speaker 3: need a cylinder to squeeze the air in front of it.
Speaker 3: If you're traveling a dozens of kilometers per second, you're
Speaker 3: going to squeeze a lot of air into a thin
Speaker 3: layer at your bow before it has the chance to
Speaker 3: move out of the way. And as a result of
Speaker 3: being so violently compressed, this air gets extremely hot, and
Speaker 3: then this layer of hot compressed gas flows around the
Speaker 3: sides of the object as it travels. This fast movement
Speaker 3: not only compresses the gas in front, but it also
Speaker 3: creates a relative vacuum in the space directly behind the meteoroid,
Speaker 3: and these forces put a lot of stress on the object,
Speaker 3: heating it up by thousands of degrees celsius, melting or
Speaker 3: vaporizing parts of it, causing pieces of it to break off.
Speaker 3: As just a huge amount of stress on a solid
Speaker 3: chunk of material, These pieces that might be broken off
Speaker 3: of the object are in turn subjected to extreme forces
Speaker 3: of heat and pressure, and a sudden breakup of the
Speaker 3: main mass of the meteoroid can release just a lot
Speaker 3: of energy quite suddenly and resemble an explosion. Also, in
Speaker 3: addition to all this, I came across a paper from
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen adding another interesting mechanism, another piece of information
Speaker 3: to the puzzle here. So this paper was by Tabita
Speaker 3: and Malash published in Mediaridtics and Planetary Science in the
Speaker 3: Air twenty eighteen, and the paper is called Air Penetration
Speaker 3: Enhances Fragmentation of Entering Meteoroids. So this paper is discussing
Speaker 3: an attempt to model the physics of a fragmenting meteoroid
Speaker 3: with reference to the example of Chellibinsk and the authors
Speaker 3: here argue that their model reveals a previously unrecognized but
Speaker 3: very important mechanism in how this breakup occurs, and that
Speaker 3: is the penetration of high pressure air inside the body
Speaker 3: of the object through permeability of the material or through
Speaker 3: tiny cracks and pores in the rock or the metal,
Speaker 3: and as this air percolates into the solid body of
Speaker 3: the meteoroid, it decreases its material strength. That weakens it
Speaker 3: and makes it more likely to want to split apart.
Speaker 3: One of the authors, Purdue University professor j. Malash, described
Speaker 3: the process in a press release, saying, quote, there's a
Speaker 3: big gradient between the high pressure air in front of
Speaker 3: the meteor and the vacuum of air behind it. If
Speaker 3: the air can move through the passages in the meteorite,
Speaker 3: it can easily get inside and blow off pieces. So
Speaker 3: air bursts are aided by this percolation, which every time
Speaker 3: I say that, I do think of coffee as a
Speaker 3: kind of kitchen first thinking. But this percolation of superheated
Speaker 3: compressed gas into the body of the meteoroid through these
Speaker 3: tiny holes and gaps in its structure. But not all
Speaker 3: meteoroids are equally vulnerable to this process. Size and density
Speaker 3: help protect a meteoroid from fragmentation and vaporization. Iron meteoroids
Speaker 3: are not completely immune, but since they are denser on
Speaker 3: average than stony meteoroids, they are less likely to result
Speaker 3: in an air burst, and thus it is more likely
Speaker 3: that large solid chunks reach the Earth's surface intact, and
Speaker 3: so I would like to talk about one such meteorite,
Speaker 3: iron meteorite that did reach the surface of the Earth
Speaker 3: in several very large pieces, and that is the inogenic meteorite,
Speaker 3: also known as the Cape York meteorite, three large pieces
Speaker 3: of which are now on display at the American Museum
Speaker 3: of Natural History in New York. There's one that is enormous,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like sort of car sized, and even
Speaker 3: the other two that are smaller are very big. So
Speaker 3: some thousands of years ago, we don't know exactly when
Speaker 3: a meteoroid weighing possibly like two hundred tons about one
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty metric tons, but we don't know for sure,
Speaker 3: entered the atmosphere and fragmented into pieces in the Arctic
Speaker 3: over North America. But as several still very large pieces
Speaker 3: of iron meteorite did make it to the ground. They
Speaker 3: landed in what is today northwestern Greenland, probably before it
Speaker 3: was inhabited by people, after people first arrived in the area.
Speaker 3: Again we don't know for sure when this was. They
Speaker 3: found these large caches of solid iron and began using
Speaker 3: them to make iron tools through a process called cold forging.
Speaker 3: Essentially using heavy objects such as stones to hammer pieces
Speaker 3: of the iron meteorite until they broke off, and then
Speaker 3: you would hammer these pieces until they reached the shape
Speaker 3: you wanted, such as a knife blade or a harpoon tip.
Speaker 3: And this cold forging process was very energy intensive. It
Speaker 3: took a lot of human labor. These sources of meteorite
Speaker 3: iron became a vital mineral resource for the Inuit peoples
Speaker 3: of the region.
Speaker 1: It is telling that once more we're talking about a
Speaker 1: culture that would often be interacting with a landscape upon
Speaker 1: which little bits of meteorites would potentially show up a
Speaker 1: lot easier and be easier to find, you know, in
Speaker 1: this case the snowscape, but in other cases we've been
Speaker 1: talking about desert environments.
Speaker 3: Ice is actually a great surface for finding meteorites. This
Speaker 3: came up in that documentary that watched by the Verner
Speaker 3: Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer documentary where they are looking for
Speaker 3: meteorites on the surface of ice sheets by helicopter in Antarctica,
Speaker 3: and it was a great place to look for them
Speaker 3: because otherwise, you know, you not expecting to see rocks
Speaker 3: on the top of these ice sheets.
Speaker 1: That is, fireball visitors from Darker Worlds from twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and yeah, we actually interviewed Herzog and Oppenheimer for the show.
Speaker 1: I believe it it was an anticipation of this, right,
Speaker 1: or was it about their volcano documentary. I'm blanking because
Speaker 1: I watched them both around the same time. At any rate,
Speaker 1: we talked to Verner Herzog and it was.
Speaker 3: Terrifying, though I do want to have a caveat there.
Speaker 3: I've seen some pictures, I believe, of how these particular
Speaker 3: iron meteorites were as they were originally in the places
Speaker 3: where the Inuit people's found them, and from what I
Speaker 3: recall seeing, it seemed like they were not just like
Speaker 3: on top of bare ice sheets, but they were positioned
Speaker 3: among a landscape more like nestled in among rocks and earth.
Speaker 3: So I think they still would have really stood out.
Speaker 3: They would have looked weird because they were iron meteorites,
Speaker 3: but not just not so much like the things that
Speaker 3: these scientists were looking for in Antarctica, where it's just
Speaker 3: like a black rock on otherwise unbroken white ice sheet.
Speaker 3: Right right, Anyway, the tools made out of these cold
Speaker 3: forged chunks of iron meteorite were they entered circulation They
Speaker 3: were sourced from these locations and then eventually traded with
Speaker 3: the communities surrounding the Inuit peoples of northwestern Greenland. Eventually
Speaker 3: they made it even farther. There's some evidence that some
Speaker 3: iron tools made out of pieces of this meteorite were
Speaker 3: traded with Norse Vikings sometime before in the eleventh century
Speaker 3: or before. But by the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, explorers
Speaker 3: from Europe started to make repeated contact with various Inuit
Speaker 3: peoples in voting. The Inhuit of the Far North and
Speaker 3: the Inuit are a group of Inuit people also known
Speaker 3: sometimes as the polar Inuit. They speak a language called
Speaker 3: Inukton and their homeland is in northwestern Greenland. These European
Speaker 3: and US explorers, such as the Scottish naval officer John Ross,
Speaker 3: recorded that in speaking to these people, they were told
Speaker 3: about some kind of mountain of iron that the Inhuit
Speaker 3: were using to make their iron tools, but for a
Speaker 3: long time they never saw. The explorers never saw these
Speaker 3: iron sources for themselves. This was until the expeditions led
Speaker 3: by the US explorer Robert Peiri beginning around eighteen ninety four.
Speaker 3: Piri is mainly known for trying to reach the North Pole.
Speaker 3: There's some dispute about whether Pery ever actually did make
Speaker 3: it to the geographic North Pole. He certainly claimed he
Speaker 3: did in April nineteen oh nine, but it's difficult to
Speaker 3: verify since the ice would have been over water and
Speaker 3: his constantly moving, so the marker he placed in the
Speaker 3: ice can't confirm it. Also, some later analysis of the
Speaker 3: records of the expedition cast doubt on the physical plausibility
Speaker 3: of their journey and also if Pieri did make it
Speaker 3: to the geographic North Pole. There's an account from Matthew Henson,
Speaker 3: an African American explorer who lived from eighteen sixty six
Speaker 3: to nineteen fifty five and served on multiple expeditions with Peery,
Speaker 3: indicating that he was actually the one who made it
Speaker 3: there first. If they did make it so, a lot
Speaker 3: of questions remain about that, but anyway, after living among
Speaker 3: the Inuit and learning from them and trading with them,
Speaker 3: Pieri eventually removed three large chunks of iron meteorite from
Speaker 3: Inhuit lands, the largest of which is known as Anihito,
Speaker 3: or the tent, and this one is more than thirty
Speaker 3: metric tons and it required the construction of a rail
Speaker 3: system just to get it to his ship in order
Speaker 3: to be transported to New York. But there were also
Speaker 3: two other smaller but still quite sizable iron masses, known
Speaker 3: as the Woman and the Dog. Later and Pieri's plan
Speaker 3: was to sell these objects in order to finance his
Speaker 3: future expeditions to the Arctic, and they remain on display
Speaker 3: today at the American Museum of Natural History. Now, in
Speaker 3: addition to taking away these meteorites that were so important
Speaker 3: to the Inhuit, not just practically as tools. More on
Speaker 3: that in a minute, there is also an incredibly tragic
Speaker 3: story of how Peery took away six Inuit people and
Speaker 3: delivered them back to the American Museum as well, under
Speaker 3: the false pretense that they would soon be sent back
Speaker 3: home with many gifts and supplies. But in crowded New York,
Speaker 3: they were quickly exposed to unfamiliar pathogens and most of
Speaker 3: them died of respiratory diseases. So in the end that
Speaker 3: story is very sad. I think one man from the
Speaker 3: group was able to return to Greenland, and there was
Speaker 3: a boy among the group named Minic who did grow
Speaker 3: up in the United States for some time. And then
Speaker 3: I believe it. Sometime later tried to return to Greenland
Speaker 3: and then also at some point came back to the
Speaker 3: United States, but he passed away in the nineteen eighteen
Speaker 3: flu pandemic. But regarding the Inuit beliefs about these meteorites
Speaker 3: that had provided them with iron tools for so many
Speaker 3: hundreds of years, I wanted to mention a really interesting
Speaker 3: episode of another podcast that I came across while researching
Speaker 3: this subject. So this other podcast is called Endless Thread
Speaker 3: and it's put out by Boston's public radio station WBUR.
Speaker 3: I previously wasn't familiar with it, but this one episode
Speaker 3: I listened to was really great. And this podcast generally
Speaker 3: discusses uses of meteorite among the Inuit people. But my
Speaker 3: favorite thing about it is that it includes interview material
Speaker 3: with an Inuit shaman named his Shoe, and it's definitely
Speaker 3: worth checking out that episode in full. I think the
Speaker 3: main title before a colon and subtitle is a meteorite
Speaker 3: in Greenland, But I wanted to mention one interesting and
Speaker 3: important thing that sort of comes up in it. So
Speaker 3: Hisshu is from a place in northwestern Greenland called hira Paluk,
Speaker 3: where the Inuit people have this long relationship with meteorite
Speaker 3: fragments and in hisshu says that in their language these
Speaker 3: are known as the excrement of the stars.
Speaker 1: That sounds like an entirely different take on.
Speaker 3: What these are, but it doesn't have the connotations you
Speaker 3: might bring to it thinking of it as excrement, because
Speaker 3: these objects are quite sacred. In fact, I've read in
Speaker 3: other contexts that a justification given for Peri's removal of
Speaker 3: the iron meteorites from Inuit lands is that the Inhuit
Speaker 3: acquired other sources of iron and steel for practical uses
Speaker 3: through trade and so forth. So the thinking is like, oh,
Speaker 3: they can get iron from other sources now, so they
Speaker 3: don't really need these meteorites anymore. Now, I think there
Speaker 3: are even if they were. Even if these meteorites were
Speaker 3: only significant for practical uses as a source of iron,
Speaker 3: I think there would be reasons for doubting that that
Speaker 3: way of thinking that justification. But in this interview Hisshue
Speaker 3: makes clear that these meteorites have significance beyond simply being
Speaker 3: utilitarian sources of metal. Though they were that as well,
Speaker 3: their significance was sacred, and he mentions that cutting off
Speaker 3: a piece of metal from the source involves a ritual.
Speaker 3: There is a ritual to that sort of giving the
Speaker 3: people access to the metal from this sacred object. And
Speaker 3: the tools made from it are not simply viewed as tools.
Speaker 3: He calls them partners because in a way, he says,
Speaker 3: everything in their view of the world is life. Everything
Speaker 3: is infused with life. So a tool made from this
Speaker 3: meteorite is not just simply a dead object to get
Speaker 3: some use out of it is a partner in your work.
Speaker 3: So anyway, if you want to check out that other
Speaker 3: podcast episode again, the show is called Endless Thread. The
Speaker 3: title of the episode is a meteorite in Greenland. But
Speaker 3: to continue on this subject, I was reading around and
Speaker 3: I found other accounts of Inuit people explaining that they
Speaker 3: view these meteorites as having a sacred power and that
Speaker 3: in fact, religious significance and material utility are not mutually
Speaker 3: exclusive in their view. So just one example I came
Speaker 3: across was a paper published in the journal Meteoritics by
Speaker 3: Mardin at All called Contemporary Inuit Traditional Beliefs concerning Meteorites.
Speaker 3: This is from the year nineteen ninety two and it
Speaker 3: records what was said about meteorites by Inuit elders in
Speaker 3: the High Canadian Arctic in nineteen eighty eight, so a
Speaker 3: few details of what the authors here were told. They
Speaker 3: were told that Inuit people have long come across rocks
Speaker 3: in the landscape that the interpret as being not natural,
Speaker 3: sort of not the same as everything else around them,
Speaker 3: and in some cases these are meteorites, and meteorite pieces
Speaker 3: that are discovered or possessed by a person can give
Speaker 3: people special powers in some cases, or have some kind
Speaker 3: of special link to the fate of the person who
Speaker 3: owns them. They mentioned that these iron meteorites have been
Speaker 3: sources of metal for the fashioning of effective tools and weapons,
Speaker 3: but contrary to what might be a common Western assumption,
Speaker 3: this does not mean that they are not viewed as
Speaker 3: sacred or spiritual objects. Quote. The one evident thing that
Speaker 3: became clear to the author is that the Inuit distinctly
Speaker 3: believed that these meteorites are religious objects of the highest order,
Speaker 3: and it brings into question the current academic practice of
Speaker 3: sending meteorites south to research institutes. Any seeming conflict with
Speaker 3: the traditional use of meteoric iron is more apparent than real.
Speaker 3: The animals, the hunt, the active, all being bound up
Speaker 3: in the mystic patterns of animistic belief. So what I
Speaker 3: take from this is it's sort of pushing back against
Speaker 3: an assumption that many Westerners might have that, oh, if
Speaker 3: people are just using this metal to make tools that
Speaker 3: they use for everyday chores, you know, for hunting and
Speaker 3: other things that must be done to survive, and you know,
Speaker 3: and maybe if you compensate them by trading with them
Speaker 3: some other objects that are useful for survival, then there's
Speaker 3: nothing wrong with taking this stuff away. And you might
Speaker 3: not feel the same way about an artifact that is
Speaker 3: that has religious significance but maybe was crafted by humans
Speaker 3: and kept in a sacred special place and has no
Speaker 3: role in the ongoing work of everyday life. But I
Speaker 3: think they're saying that's wrong. Even though this is used
Speaker 3: to make materials that are used in regular work, it
Speaker 3: still is also sacred. And that kind of raises questions
Speaker 3: for me about like, why would we have the contrary
Speaker 3: assumption to begin with? Why would we naturally assume that
Speaker 3: if a material is broken off of a mother load
Speaker 3: and hammered into blades or harpoon tips or other tools
Speaker 3: used for everyday survival, that material is not sacred or
Speaker 3: is not a religious object. The conclusion doesn't actually follow
Speaker 3: from that premise. It implies there's some other unstated premise
Speaker 3: that is driving the intuition, and that premise could be
Speaker 3: something like things you see every day aren't sacred, or
Speaker 3: things you use to accomplish work are not sacred, which, again,
Speaker 3: like where would such a belief come from?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot to unwrapped there, because on one hand,
Speaker 1: you could see this kind of viewpoint being rooted in
Speaker 1: like clear examples of highly ornate objects that were non
Speaker 1: intended for actual functional use, such as some sort of
Speaker 1: a ritualistic weapon that was clearly not intended for use
Speaker 1: on the battlefield, or some sort of ritualistic item that
Speaker 1: essentially has the role of a scepter where it becomes
Speaker 1: a symbol of power, but it is some divorced from
Speaker 1: practical applications that it may have had in its sort
Speaker 1: of artifact based history, like for instance, the traditional traditional
Speaker 1: scepters and Chinese tradition. I've seen some discussion that they
Speaker 1: they may have in origin been backscratchers. It's one theory,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's like, Okay, you have a practical
Speaker 1: item that then ultimately becomes a thing that is completely
Speaker 1: divorced from that tradition. And so if you're looking for
Speaker 1: those kinds of like clear examples like Okay, well this
Speaker 1: is clearly a sacred item because it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: it could be used every day. So you have that
Speaker 1: going on. But then yeah, I don't know. It is
Speaker 1: weird to think about this idea of thinking that everyday items,
Speaker 1: every day things cannot be held up as sacred because
Speaker 1: I think, for one thing, you can see various plenty
Speaker 1: of examples from history where things people encountered every day
Speaker 1: still took on sacred meaning. One example that comes to
Speaker 1: mind is the horse. Like the horse is you know,
Speaker 1: during times of its domestication to be clear here, you know,
Speaker 1: it takes on sacred connotations, mystical connotations. Like the horse.
Speaker 1: The skull of the horse is often held up in
Speaker 1: different societies, is having some sort of a you know,
Speaker 1: peculiar meaning or are to it. And yet the horse
Speaker 1: was every day. The horse was something that that was
Speaker 1: just part of your daily life and you depended upon.
Speaker 1: And then on the other end of things, like there's
Speaker 1: just our personal experience, like a beloved tool. We may
Speaker 1: not really be in the mindset of thinking about things
Speaker 1: in our immediate vicinity as being you know, mystical or
Speaker 1: magical or sacred, because maybe we just don't apply that
Speaker 1: mindset to our immediate world. But I don't think that
Speaker 1: the way we consider our tools and consider our our
Speaker 1: knickknacks are completely divorced from that thinking either. I mean,
Speaker 1: just think about, like, whatever, if you do engage in
Speaker 1: some sort of a craft or a handy work, like
Speaker 1: do you have a beloved tool? And and how much
Speaker 1: would you have to lean into the idea of it
Speaker 1: being important to get to the level of it being sacred.
Speaker 3: Or the source of the material from which it is
Speaker 3: made being sacred. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this also comes back to It reminds me we
Speaker 1: were talking earlier about excrement in the idea of meteoric
Speaker 1: iron as being the excrement of the sky or so forth.
Speaker 1: This brings me back to something that came up in
Speaker 1: our episodes on Dust about how there's sort of like
Speaker 1: a modern understanding of excrement. You know, it's just pure waste, right,
Speaker 1: But for people that were actually engaged in like working
Speaker 1: the land and all like, there would have been more
Speaker 1: of an understanding that this is not like a valueless byproduct.
Speaker 1: This is something that then can be used to grow
Speaker 1: something new. You know, it can be used as a fertilizer.
Speaker 1: There are various traditions where of course it's also used
Speaker 1: and typically you know, I think we're dealing with animal
Speaker 1: excrement in these cases, but it can be used also
Speaker 1: as fuel for fire, So you don't have to like
Speaker 1: lean far in that direction to see this is something
Speaker 1: that can be that new life can be breathed.
Speaker 3: Into, you know, mm hmm.
Speaker 1: But again, just coming back to the idea of sacred
Speaker 1: items in everyday life. I mean, yeah, I think most
Speaker 1: of us can easily admit that we very easily imbue
Speaker 1: physical items with meaning. I mean, it becomes a problem
Speaker 1: for people. So it's they're not necessarily, you know, hoarders
Speaker 1: are not making everything sacred, I guess necessarily, But you know,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think it's you know, beyond the
Speaker 1: realm of of our understanding that that a tool, especially
Speaker 1: when you depend upon could could you know, take on
Speaker 1: a sacred quality. Now as we begin to close out
Speaker 1: these episodes, I guess we're closing out these episodes on iron,
Speaker 1: I don't know, do you think you have another one
Speaker 1: in you, Joe.
Speaker 3: Well, there certainly are plenty more examples we could talk about,
Speaker 3: but I feel like maybe we're ready to move on
Speaker 3: for for our purposes, but we could come back to it,
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, yeah, come up again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a lot of examples out there. I
Speaker 1: would love to hear from listeners about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: for ins as we didn't touch on much in the
Speaker 1: way of modern meteoric weapons that have been produced very
Speaker 1: much with the understanding that these are meteors, these meteorites
Speaker 1: and this this is metal from the sky, and you
Speaker 1: see various examples of this. The late Terry Pratchett, for example,
Speaker 1: had a meteoric blade forged for himself using I believe
Speaker 1: bits of meteorite that he himself had collected. This was
Speaker 1: for when he was knighted.
Speaker 3: Oh boy.
Speaker 1: He wanted to make sure you had the right sword.
Speaker 3: For it, really making it an occasion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, make a feast of it, there's all. There
Speaker 1: are also various other blades. I was reading about a
Speaker 1: Japanese blade. This is a Japanese Samurai sword forged by
Speaker 1: modern day swordsmith Yoshindo Yoshiwara. It is called the Tintatsuto
Speaker 1: or the Sword of Heavenly Iron. And this particular sword
Speaker 1: which you can see is on display. It uses iron
Speaker 1: from the Gibeon meteorite that fell in Namibia during prehistoric times.
Speaker 1: You can look up images of it. Looks pretty cool
Speaker 1: and I also read that fragments of this meteorite were
Speaker 1: also traditionally used by the Nama people of Namibia for
Speaker 1: many centuries in tools and in weapons. And you'll find
Speaker 1: various meteoric swords in fiction. I don't believe this is
Speaker 1: in the core books, this may be in the additional matter,
Speaker 1: but apparently a couple of these blades show up in
Speaker 1: the works of J. R. Tolkien and also on Avatar
Speaker 1: the Last Airbender. I'd totally forgotten about this, but a
Speaker 1: meteoric sword does come into play on that show as well.
Speaker 1: Those are just a couple of the fictional examples, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are plenty more. So yes, we would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you out there. Write in with
Speaker 1: your favorite examples of fictional meteoric weapons, as well as
Speaker 1: various examples or potential examples. With that huge caveat you
Speaker 1: know that we get into in the first episode regarding
Speaker 1: actual weapons that may include iron of meteoric origin. Please do.
Speaker 3: We're gonna get a lot of the fictional ones, Robin,
Speaker 3: I think this is a rich vein to exploit here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's have it all right, We're gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and close out the show here. But hey again, we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there, and if you
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Speaker 3: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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