Unable to eliminate them, he has studied ways of adding chemicals that change the composition of the dirt. For instance, by adding titanium to the steel mixture, Garrison said the composition of the dirt changes so that voids don't develop around the particles until the steel undergoes much greater strain. These kinds of high-strength steels aren't cheap. The students in the Dragonslayer project weren't concerned so much about cost as they were with infusing their sword with mysticism. That's why some of the iron will come from meteorites.
Meteorites are bits of material left over from the formation of the solar system's planets.
When chunks of this material enter Earth's atmosphere, their speed causes frictional heating that turns them into fireballs. About 95 percent of the meteorites that survive to reach Earth are made of rock, but the remainder contain a combination of iron and nickel. Legendary swords, such as King Arthur's Excalibur, were said to be struck of meteoritic iron, he added. For Dragonslayer, Harvey Abramowitz, of Purdue University in Calumet, is developing methods for extracting iron from meteorites. It's turning out to be a little more challenging than I thought.