Benthium

Benthium is an unusual ceramic alloy formed deep in the walls of the Manifold Sky's many commissures. Extremely rare and of somewhat indeterminite composition, synthetically-produced benthium is of great interest for those working in the development of ultra-hard armors and miniaturized dieseltech devices.

Properties

Material Characteristics

Benthium is a dark grayish-purple metal with a similar lustre to that of compressed graphite. Occasional inclusions of softer metals may be corroded, dissolved, or melted away, leaving pores in natural fragments of benthium.

Physical & Chemical Properties

Benthium is extremely resistant to corrosion, breakage, and heat. For these reasons, the material has attracted similar interest from the defense industries as Eudoxium and endurastahl despite its relative rarity. Chemical assaults have been the most effective at breaking down benthium samples, as even diamond abrasives have difficulty against the ultra-hard metal; aqua regia and certain other strong acid compounds can successfully dissolve the alloy. Benthium is known to have a higher melting temperature than tungsten.
Benthium has two known crystal structures, those being cubic and rhombic dodecahedral. The circumstances under which one polymorph of the material forms in preference to the other remains unknown, as all samples melted or dissolved and allowed to recrystallize under laboratory conditions have taken the dodecahedral form. It is believed, though unconfirmed, that creating the cubic form requires the application of pressures not possible to achieve with current technologies.

Compounds

Benthite is mostly comprised of a naturally-formed ceramic steel, with its most unusual properties believed to derive from whatever gives the material its unusual purple lustre. Unfortunately, all attempts to extract and concentrate this unknown coalloy have thus far failed. On the rare occasions when benthite has been successfully pulverized, each small grain retains its mechanical and visual properties, suggesting that the unknown component is bound to the material on a molecular level. Chemical solutions which preferrentially attack iron compounts briefly turn a dark violet on contact with benthite, but this color soon fades and no capturable vapor or precipitate is produced. Attempts to fractionate the metal in a smelter have similarly failed, as the material remains bound strongly to the iron even well above its melting temperature.

Origin & Source

Benthium is believed to form from iron-rich magma being exposed to the intense heat, pressure, and the extra-dimensional energies which also power tectonic circumvection at the depth of commissures beneath the cubes' crusts. The purpling element in the alloy has been theorized to come from (and, upon chemical assault, return to) somewhere beyond the Manifold, perhaps leaking into the Manifold in the same manner as sunlight or the seasonal particle radiation of the Northern and Southern Tesseracts.

Type

Metal

Odor

Faint, ozone-like aroma when heated or pulverized

Taste

Characteristic 'electric' flavor

Common State

Solid sheets of thin cubic crystals stacked in the manner of micah or shale