How good would a sword made out of a meteorite really be?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Disliker of the mary sue

would it be radioactive or is this one of those cases of misconception on how radiation works.

It would be radioactive, I believe. It emits alpha particles (helium nuclei), which are stopped by the epidermis. Alpha emitters are mostly dangerous if inhaled or ingested, I believe.

[Anaraxes]

Or a sword of plutonium. And matching scabbard. Complete with a prophecy: "The Sword of Groves must never be sheathed!" No, really, I mean it. Don't put the two back together. Ever.

Hm, probably have to make it a 2-hander.

[Disliker of the mary sue]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

It would be radioactive, I believe. It emits alpha particles (helium nuclei), which are stopped by the epidermis. Alpha emitters are mostly dangerous if inhaled or ingested, I believe.

So that's means it be safe as long as your not stupid enough to eat it?


And which radioactive material would be dangerous to be in close proximity to? Sorry to say I'm not exactly well knowledgeable in such things.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Disliker of the mary sue

And which radioactive material would be dangerous to be in close proximity to? Sorry to say I'm not exactly well knowledgeable in such things.

There are lots of different kinds of radioactive materials. Recommended book: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes. This will teach you a lot of the material quite painlessly.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Disliker of the mary sue

So that's means it be safe as long as your not stupid enough to eat it?

Probably. A steel sword will be radioactive too (mostly C14 from the charcoal in a historic blade, a little more for modern steels which are detectably contaminated by artificial radioisotopes that got in via scrap recycling). A pure uranium sword is slightly more radioactive than that, but natural uranium just isn't that hazardous. It might elevate your cancer risk a little to carry it around for a lifetime, but if it were decaying fast enough to be a serious hazard, it would have already decayed away.

This is basically true of any radioisotopes. The only dangerous ones are recent, made in the last few thousand years, either entirely artificially or as fast steps in a decay chain of something much more stable, meaning they're present in such tiny traces you'll need to process tons of ore to get a few grains of them. You can't realistically make a dangerously radioactive blade at low TLs.

[Cuddle_Fish]

Doesn't uranium have a tendency to burst into flame when struck sufficiently vigorously? That could be a rather fun situation for all involved if it occurs at human-feasible impact velocities; though I don't know if that's the case.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Disliker of the mary sue

So that's means it be safe as long as your not stupid enough to eat it?

Uranium itself is almost exclusively an alpha emitter, but its first couple of decay products are beta emitters and build up to a stable level rapidly. However, pure uranium simply isn't all that radioactive in the first place, because it has a very long half life; U238 is more toxic chemically than radioactively.

[Disliker of the mary sue]

Hm so basically any sword made of radioactive materials would not cause radiation damage to the users unless it some sort of synthetic material and if your smart enough to make the stuff you would know it a stupid idea to make a blade out of it. I love this forum, seems like almost every has extensive knowledge on these sort of subjects.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Disliker of the mary sue

Hm so basically any sword made of radioactive materials would not cause radiation damage to the users unless it some sort of synthetic material and if your smart enough to make the stuff you would know it a stupid idea to make a blade out of it.

You're very unlikely to have access to radioactive materials before swords have become thoroughly obsolete; as far as I can tell none were isolated before the 19th century, because radioactive metals are both uncommon and not particularly easy to purify.

[Disliker of the mary sue]

Originally Posted by Anthony

You're very unlikely to have access to radioactive materials before swords have become thoroughly obsolete; as far as I can tell none were isolated before the 19th century, because radioactive metals are both uncommon and not particularly easy to purify.

Meh I know that, I was sort of trying to imply that if you had the knowledge and technology to create synthetic radioactive materials that would actually be dangerous to be around, you'd probably wouldn't be making swords out of it since not only is a unhealthy and stupid idea, it's also probably uneconomical and a waste of perfectly good resources.