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Kryptonite Found! I doubt it…

Posted 23 April, 2007 at 11:56pm by Michael Chu
(Filed under: Current Events)

Okay, this post is going to reveal just how geeky I can be. I'll try to keep it short though. So, Reuters reported today that geologists in Serbia discovered a mineral with the chemical composition of LiNaSiB3O7(OH) (see Mindat.org for details). When Dr. Chris Stanley of London's Natural History Museum searched for "sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide", he discovered that this was the scientific name printed under the display of the rock which Lex Luthor stole from the Metropolis Museum in 2006's Superman Returns. So, now a bunch of news sources are reporting that the white, powdery substance (which doesn't contain fluorine) is kryptonite. Now, here's the geek stuff - my first thought was, huh, that's silly. Then I thought, well, what if the introduction of fluorine allows the compound to form large green crystals. Then I thought, what if it's not the fluorine or the "sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide" that's kryptonite, but what if kryptonite is a chemical element or compound that is as yet undiscovered and undetectable by current technology and the mineral in the movie contained not just sodium, lithium, boron, silicon, hydrogen, oxygen, and fluorine but also kryptonite (which turns the powdery white substance into a large crystalled green mineral). That means, they didn't actually find kryptonite, they just found a mineral that could be doped with "unknown chemical substance" to form green kryptonite.

Okay, go ahead and poke holes in it…

4 comments to Kryptonite Found! I doubt it…

Gary, April 28th, 2007 at 12:39 pm:

  • I couldn't help but notice that the self-professed geeky reporter spelled FLUORINE incorrectly in all four occurrences!

Michael Chu, April 28th, 2007 at 5:08 pm:

  • Haha! You are right, man… that's embarrasing. I'm going to fix my typos now…

Alan Singleton, August 18th, 2007 at 6:46 pm:

  • If Kryptonite were made up of Chemical Elements then it would not be
    an Chemical Element itself, but would be a Chemical Compound, or
    Mineral.

    ALSO, he spelled FLUORINE correctly in all occurrences…
    That's how it's spelled.

    fluor·ine
    (flŏŏr'ēn', -ĭn, flôr'-, flōr'-)
    Chemical Symbol F

    A pale-yellow, highly corrosive, poisonous, gaseous halogen element,
    the most electronegative and most reactive of all the elements, used
    in a wide variety of industrially important compounds.

    Atomic number 9
    atomic weight 18.9984
    freezing point -219.62°C
    melting point -223°C
    boiling point -188.14°C
    specific gravity of liquid 1.108 (at boiling point);
    valence 1

    ryger3351@usa.net

Superman, October 15th, 2007 at 7:17 am:

  • Why does reading all this make me feel weak?

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