Knowledge

Is everything made on Earth made up of things from Earth?

Nope! There’s actually a really good historical example of this. Before humans knew how to extract iron from iron ore (which occurred around 1,200 BCE) a few groups of people were already using iron tools. Look at this example of iron fastened to the end of a harpoon [1,2] :

How did they do this? King Tut was buried with an iron dagger even though no one knew how to smelt iron back when he was alive [3]:

So where did this iron come from? There’s no natural iron just sitting around on the ground waiting for people to use it. smelting iron from iron ore is immensely difficult. However, there’s a huge amount of iron in space!

These iron-rich meteorites would be found by ancient people and processed into useful tools. Nobody could heat a furnace to the required temperature to cast and forge iron, so these meteorites were “cold worked” (i.e. simply hammered into the required shape at room temperature). So there you go! Not everything made by humans is from stuff in the Earth’s crust.

Meteors fall on the planet with regularity, so a not insignificant portion of the planet is made up of stuff that originated “off world”. If you want a concrete example, I give you these:

Those pistols are a matched pair of 1911’s made entirely from a meteorite (with exception of the magazines and barrel). They’re selling for $4.5 million if you’re interested.

Related Posts

Why is it that a 747 starts off slowly then halfway down the runway, it’s full throttle? An A380 is full throttle from the start.

Apparently, a lot of pilots are not aware of the origin of this practice. This was not done until the 747 was introduced. Prior to the 747, when…

Why is the Martian soil considered toxic, and how does that affect growing food on Mars?

Sadly, if Mark Watney really had to try and survive by growing potatoes in his own shit, he would still be on Mars – and very dead. What Andy Weir…

Is it true that the Space Shuttle smelled quite bad when ground crews got aboard after a flight to clean and unload?

I worked as a Flight Crew Systems engineer for Lockheed Space Ops and then United Space Alliance, supporting over a hundred missions. Because some of my group took…

How can US Navy carriers that were built 3-4 decades ago be better than Chinese Navy carriers built just 2-3 years ago?

Love this question and I’ll throw my hat into the ring here. The question, for the benefit of the uninformed, is the following: Why is this ship that…

If a nuclear powered aircraft carrier was sunk in deep sea water, would the reactor be cooled enough by the sea, or would it explode?

The only time a nuclear reactor actually exploded was in Chernobyl. It happened because the operators broke a cardinal rule on thermal spectrum nuclear reactors: You NEVER, EVER…

For how long do I have to aim a laser at the moon to see a dot?

There are two possible questions here. The first is simply how long would it take for a laser to travel to the moon and back. The moon is…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *