Department of Metallurgy, University of Eregion
Celebrimbor
要約：滅びの亀裂には金とサウロンの血の混合を一つの指輪に変換する反応の触媒が存在すると仮定することで様々な現象を説明できる。
It is said that The One Ring was made by mixing gold with Sauron's blood. It could not be unmade even by the fire of Ancaragon the Black Dragon, and could only be unmade in the molten lava in The Cracks of Doom. Is it that the temperature of The Cracks of Doom (hereafter denoted by COD) was much higher than that of Ancaragon's fire? It seems implausible. If it had been a simple matter of temperature, Numenorians or Elves might have been able to create enough high temperature and unmake it.
In this paper I propose more plausible scenario that in the COD there were a special kind of "catalyst". Catalyst is a class of material which promotes certain kind of chemical reaction. For example, all kind of enzymes are catalyst, which transforms or decomposes or composes certain kind of protein. Catalyst promotes the chemical reaction by reducing the energy of intermediate state in the reaction path.
Figure 1 depicts the formation energy of The One Ring. There is a very high energy barrier between the two states, "Gold + Sauron's blood" and "The One Ring". This barrier is so high that even the fire of Ancaragon is not sufficient to activate the reaction. But some special material in the COD works as a catalyst and reduces the barrier to some level which is accessible. In the formation of The One Ring, the end product is immediately separated from the catalyst, exploiting the difference of density, so that the reverse reaction does not occur.
In conclusion, I presented a new scenario of catalyst effect to explain the properties of The One Ring.
[1] Feanor, Rev.Craft.Metal., 12 1034 (F.A. 1103).
[2] Annatar, Ann.Rev.Ring., 134 132 (S.A. 1201).
Note added: Ref.[2] was recently withdrawn owing to the author's forged identity.
Figure 1: Schematic energy landscape of the formation process of The One Ring.
