• Question: If you compressed Krypton gas into a supersolid. Would it be Kryptonite?

    Asked by connorhoad to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 29 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      I think Kryptonite would be an awesome name for for frozen solid krypton!! You should market it!!

      Being a massive comic geek though, i thought you might like this…

      In Superman, when Lex Luthor is trying to work out what kryptonite is made out of so he can make more he describes it as ‘sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide’. (remember this is fictional)

      ::However::

      In 2007 a miner came across a pretty boring looking white rock, did some analysis on it and found out it was indeed made of, for the want of a more scientific nomenclature, sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide!! He only made the link between the comic and the rock when he googled it!

      Here, it was on the News and that::

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6584229.stm

      It’s pretty gutting that it doesn’t even glow or anything 🙁

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Kryptonite is actually a “fictional material from the Superman mythos — the ore form of a radioactive element from Superman’s home planet of Krypton. It is famous for being the ultimate natural weakness of Superman and most other Kryptonians, and the word Kryptonite has since become synonymous with an Achilles’ heel —the one weakness of an otherwise invulnerable hero.”

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptonite

      So the answer is no, you can produce kryptonite from supersolid Krypton! Krypton is a noble gas, meaning it doesn’t react with things really well… it is rather stable!

      Krypton is a colorless, odorless gas. It has a boiling point of -152.9°C (-243.2°F) and a density of 3.64 grams per liter. That makes krypton about 2.8 times as dense as air. Aside from the fictitious nature of kryptonite, there is another difference between it and krypton. Kryptonite is a rock—one that can cause great harm to, well, one person anyway. Krypton is an inert gas that has no effect on anything.

      http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/krypton.aspx

    • Photo: Ashley Cadby

      Ashley Cadby answered on 30 Jun 2012:

      It would be called what ever you wanted to call it, if you were the first person to do it. However, it would just be the solid state of a noble gas.

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