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[Amallar]

Edited my post for great justice.

[xordae]

Yeah because DF is so much about realism.
Anyhoo the other day I was fighting off a hydra using a squad of dwarves weilding weapons made of magical blue metal when a necromancer turned up but it was fine because my vampire killed him and then it began to rain zombie making acid.

I see your point, but when it's about minerals, geology, metal properties and all that then he likes to be pretty realistic. Other metals have their accurate values and then you have Adamantine with its straight 5000s. I'm pretty sure it will eventually be changed.

[wierd]

empirical molarity by measuring the percentage of material lost in the reaction.

Better if we examine the weights if the source wafers, and of the finished craft to better evaluate the reactivity.

Lots of guesswork, but part of the periodic table's power is its predictive qualities. Knowing how reactive something is helps constrain what period in the table.

Sadly, without also measuring the slag to have known reactant molar weights, empirical derivation will never be exact.
[/quote]

Adamantine's molar mass is given in the raws. It's the same as iron.

It's the same as iron!
[/quote]

If adamantine has the same molar mass as iron, then it has the same atomic weight as iron, or else the number of particles wouldn't match the avagadro constant.

This means that an atom of adamantine weighs 56 amu.

To convert amu to grams, we multiply the amu by 1.66053886x10^(-24).

About the closest solid substance in the range up to atomic number 56 (the highest you can go with that atomic weight) with a density ratio that would work out in the ballpark of adamantium, (whan adjusted for the lower mass) is indium.

The density of indium is 7.31 g/cm^3, and it has an atomic mass of 114.8. This means there are 38346563106925887446277.3 atoms per cm^3 of indium.

If we substitute a molecule with the same atomic mass as iron, and give it the electronic configuration of indium so that it has the same proportion of atoms per cm^3, we get a substance with a density of 3.565 g/cm^3.

This is 356.5g/m^3.

This element would be a radical isotope of indium, would be radically unstable radiologically, and would not have the mechanical properties adamantium has.  (Indium is soft, melts easily, etc.)

Thus, I can only conclude that adamantium has some kind of exotic quantum mechanical property which limits how well it interacts with the higgs field, because ordinary matter does not yeild even a theoretical substance with adamantine's properties.

(That is to say, it is para-gravitational effects, similar to "element zero" from mass effect.)

Its's companion material, slade, would appear to interact the other way with a similar mechanism, exhibiting supergravitational effects.

This means that a value like molar weight has no meaning, since the gravitational constant is not obeyed within the material's nucleus. This could also explain its unique properties, in that it would partially repell the gravitational fields of any matter it came into contact with.  (Compare to paramagnetism, such as found in bismuth and graphene.) This also applies to interractions involving inertia, which is tied proportionally to mass.

Study of the material could theoretically yeild ftl propulsion (eek!)

Conversely, slade could possibly be used to create artificial gravity.

If we assume that this is what is happening, then adamantine would likely be one of the hypothetical "island of stability" transuranic elements, and without the reality distortion field, would weigh more than solid plutionium.

[Girlinhat]

So... Adamantine's weight comes from a form of antigravity, of sorts?  It's actually very heavy, but exhibits the ability to nullify its own weight.  That makes some sense, actually.

It also occurred to me, that if adamantine has atoms that size and a density of that ratio, would that make it porous enough to be watertight?  Or airtight?

[forsaken1111]

Lots of stuff

Right, it's magic. You can't physics magic because magic.

So... Adamantine's weight comes from a form of antigravity, of sorts?  It's actually very heavy, but exhibits the ability to nullify its own weight.  That makes some sense, actually.

Not quite. It doesn't nullify its own weight if I understand him, it simply doesn't interact with gravity in the same way normal matter does. In effect, it HAS no weight (or very little). It does not have the expected mass if it interacts strangely with the higgs field.

Now we need someone to figure out if adamantine could function as the exotic matter necessary to keep a wormhole open and stable and we have Space Fortress: Conquest of Worlds.

[Amallar]

It's enlightening to see so much empirical reasoning behind a post (as opposed to my own wildly extrapolative nonsense). However, this does not provide a mechanism for adamantine's unnatural graphene structure. It would be nice if we could find some probable source of origin for adamantine and slade (if string theory is too insane). I'm also concerned as to the validity of materials that ignore standard gravity being found inside a planet; such properties have only been observed in subatomic particles with differing quark charges (antimatter with positrons, etc. being one such example). If such is the case, then adamantine and slade should not be interacting so mundanely with regular matter.         

[Girlinhat]

You think they interact in mundane ways?  We get soap pillars, single-tile towers, and gypsum and chalk walls.  The world is fucked.  Adamantine has perverted ALL the physics!

[Crioca]

You think they interact in mundane ways?  We get soap pillars, single-tile towers, and gypsum and chalk walls.  The world is fucked.  Adamantine has perverted ALL the physics!

I don't think it's fucked per se, it's just that it doesn't operate under the same physical constants that our universe does. Similar mostly, but not the same.

[wierd]

More interestingly, we have whole planets with surface areas (including the ocean) approximately equal to subsaharan africa, but with surface gravity of 1g.

This means the core of the planet is **NOT** made of iron!

It would *need* something like slade!  The paragravitational effects of the adamantine would help ensure that the inverse square law didn't do really horrible stuff to dwarves as they dug really deep.

(Gravitational attraction is inversely proportioned to the ratio of the masses and the distances between them. Being in close proximity to a core powerful enough to simulate a planet many times its size, would be no fun at all!)


*edit*

That is to say, a gravity well extending from any arbitrary massed object would not be spherical, if it came into contact with adamantine.  Adamantine's paragravitational effect would act "gravity shielding", by "resisting" the normal propogation of the gravity well as it tries to interact with it.

Standing on a really thick block of adamantine could make you weigh less if you stood on a scale there, because gravity well of the planet is partially impeded by the adamantine.

This means that stuffing something inside an adamantine bag would make the item + bag weight be less than if both were weighed seperately, and other craziness.

The opposite would be true for slade.

This is not antigravity though. Antigravity is exhibited by a material that antigravitates. Eg, it would want to fly off into space to get away from the planet's gravity, due to the object having negative mass.

Adamantine doesn't have negative mass. It has paragravity. Very different.

[ASCIt]

So, to summarize once more:

Rather than abiding by our Earth rules, the worlds of dwarf fortress are an eternal power struggle between adamantine and slade. While one of the two wishes nothing more than to hold us down, the other would just love flinging all of the dwarves into low orbit.

[Amallar]

@weird

That is a rational explanation, but it also suggests that adamantine is cooperatively formed with slade. We have no mechanism, as of yet, for such formation; unless, of course, we extrapolate that slade is formed naturally as a result of gravitational distortion within certain planets (?). I really don't want to abandon my adamantine quantum string idea, because then adamantine's weave formation makes no sense. >.<

And, of course, adamantine (if we're willing to discount slade as natural matter of ungodly density, as opposed to "matter" of variable subatomic charge) is similar to antimatter for the reasons I discussed previously; such a substance should NOT be reacting stably with the mundane matter around it.

It also stands to reason, for the same points on gravity that you made, that slade would create such microsingularities as I described.

Or, perhaps, slade is actually a distorted singularity itself, and adamantine's paragravitational effects once it reached a certain vicinity from the "vortex" (we have reached the subject of planetary formation around black holes) warps the hyperdense entity into material that exhibits extreme gravitation (but not the quantum compression observed in a black hole); matter from a proto-planetary belt would be easily attracted to such a dense object, and a planet would be rapidly formed around it.

This suggests that adamantine is some form of cosmic entity, itself.

It also suggests that, when dwarves remove adamantine from its proximity around slade, they are weakening the connection that keeps a black hole core stable -- that is, hastening the collapse of the entire planet :x

Just a theory, though.

[Girlinhat]

I dunno, slade may very well be an unconventional form of matter.  It's one of two materials that dwarves cannot mine.  If a copper pick can't break it, it must be made of unnatural form and not composed of traditional atoms and particles.  Slade and Semi-molten rock are very likely unconventional matter.

[ASCIt]

I dunno, slade may very well be an unconventional form of matter.  It's one of two materials that dwarves cannot mine.  If a copper pick can't break it, it must be made of unnatural form and not composed of traditional atoms and particles.  Slade and Semi-molten rock are very likely unconventional matter.

However, while it's assumed to be a glitch, it is, in fact, possible to mine slade in unorthodox manners.

sorry, accidentally did a strikethrough          ^

[Girlinhat]

Which only confirms its unorthodox nature.  Furthermore slade must be some type of quantum material, as it becomes superdense and unworkable when observed, but if you strike blindly then it's a pliable as shale or granite!  Perhaps all the issues we're observing with slade's impossible weight, is that it isn't heavy at all.  It only becomes massive when we determine it to be massive.

[ASCIt]

Which only confirms its unorthodox nature.  Furthermore slade must be some type of quantum material, as it becomes superdense and unworkable when observed, but if you strike blindly then it's a pliable as shale or granite!  Perhaps all the issues we're observing with slade's impossible weight, is that it isn't heavy at all.  It only becomes massive when we determine it to be massive.

Weeping Angel spawner, perhaps?