Posted on 11/15/2006 11:04:58 AM PST by blam
Secret's out for Saracen sabres
15 November 2006
NewScientist.com news service
DURING the middle ages, the Muslims who fought crusaders with swords of Damascus steel had an edge - a very high-tech one. Their sabres contained carbon nanotubes.
From about AD 900 to AD 1750, Damascus sabres were forged from Indian steel called wootz. Peter Paufler of the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, and colleagues studied samples of a 17th-century sword under an electron microscope and found clear evidence of carbon nanotubes and even nanowires.
The researchers think that the sophisticated process of forging and annealing the steel formed the nanotubes and the nanowires, and could explain the amazing mechanical properties of the swords (Nature, vol 444, p 286).
From issue 2578 of New Scientist magazine, 15 November 2006, page 20
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientisttech.com ...
Nanotechnology? From Satan, no doubt..............
Yet another example that you don't have to know about or understand a technology to use it.
They couldn't do it today.
Sure they could. All they gotta do is make it the same way.
What "amazing mechanical properties" do the swords possess?
Neat article!
Space aliens taught them how to make the blades.
The steel is very hard and takes a fine edge without being brittle.
The samurii sword was manufactured using the heat, fold and hammer technique. The steel's crystalline structure was lined up with each folding and hammering technique so that a strong blade with a fine edge made for a wowser weapon, (pardon the high tech talk).
a lot of people used gravity before newton got hit on the head by that apple.
Iron by itself is hard, but brittle, and weapons made from it can shatter easily, which is not a good thing.
Steel, which is iron mixed with other materials, is just as hard, but is flexible and not so easy to shatter. Problem is getting the mix and pattern right, because poorly made steel weapons have breakage problems as well.
Damascus steel for its time was exceptionally good material to make weapons from and weaponry made from it tended not to break. This may not be remarkable today, but for its time that was amazing.
Yes, but it seems I'm still the only one using the antigravity device and I STILL don't know how it works. ;^)
no you're not - whenever I think of my lady, I walk on air!;-)
I mean the Muslims and Syria in particular aren't that industrial or creative. They lucked into it before and wouldn't understand it now.
They didn't understand it then. All they did was know that if you did such and such when making the steel it came out better. They didn't know why it came out better, they just knew it did.
Sure, they lucked into it but many technological breakthroughs are lucked into. Not many are actually the result of folks saying, "This could be done.", and then putting in the sweat and research to find a way to do it.
Thanks all.
Always heard that these swords were pretty much "state of the art" at the time. Of course, the debate now is more like M-16 vs. AK47, but a consideration of the comparative political resolve and social cohesiveness is no less significant now than it was then - and I sometimes wonder about that one, frankly.
Oh, come on. They at least have 17th century technology and techniques and that's all we're talking about here. They actually have 21st century technology available to them under the right circumstances, much of it gained in the universities of Europe and the US. The folks in Pakistan are no more advanced than those in Syria, yet they have built and tested functioning nukes.
"... What is the work of genius the first time is the work of a tinsmith soon thereafter. It required genius the first time because it was the first time, and also because technology was so primitive. All the calculations had to be done manually at first, on big mechanical calculators. All the work on the first hydrogen bomb was done on the first primitive computers - Eniac, I think it was called. But today?" Ghosn laughed. It really was absurd. "A videogame has more computing power than Eniac ever did. I can run the calculations on a high-end personal computer in seconds and duplicate what took Einstein months. But the most important thing is that they did not really know if it was possible. It is, and I know that! Next, they made records of how they proceeded. Finally, I have a template, and though I cannot reverse-engineer it entirely, I can use this as a theoretical model..."
Damascus steel isn't something they invented. Like almost everything else in the Arab / Persian / Muslim world it came from someplace else by way of trade. Notice the article mentions that the swords were made from steel from India, called "wootz." Carbon nanotubes are a variation of carbon spheres, or Carbon 60, popularly known as Buckminsterfullerene or "Buckballs," was accidentally discovered and occurs naturally in candle soot. It's a naturally occuring form of carbon, just one we didn't know about until very recently. Our own engineers stumbled across the nanotube and "wire" variants through largely random trial and error. It's not surprising that it has cropped up in materials like this.
Returning to the idea that they "aren't that industrial or creative," there are Afghan gunsmiths working in the backwater tribal areas who can fabricate, from scratch, a viable replica of an AK-47. We must not make the mistake of underestimating people because they happen to be bloodthirsty psychos or don't own a car. That makes us more vulnerable to them. They have every resource that any other human living today has availble, just a lot less inhibition about using it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.