Galvorn is real!
 

Researchers at the US Air Force and NASA have announced a new material, which is lightweight, flexible, stronger than steel, at least as conductive as copper, and black. There are almost limitless applications for this stuff, everything from turbine blades to wiring harnesses. The designers decided to name it after the wonder-metal invented in Nan Elmoth by Eol the Dark Elf.

http://www.thecooldown.com/green-tec...tronics-copper

The link is kind of vague, but it sounds like it's some variety of carbon fibre or graphene. Certainly they say outright that it's made from carbon, which makes this quote:

kind of hilarious. Do we think copper is more carbon-heavy than, uh, carbon?

hS

Copper itself, of course, has no carbon. I assume the reference is to the carbon footprint resulting from extracting and refining copper.

However, if the Galvorn starts talking...

I am not one to meddle, but it certainly raises the question of one's chemical science mettle...or metal, as the case may be.

I'd assume so. Given that the most likely source of hydrocarbons for their product is mineral oil, I'm extremely not sold on it being less carbon-heavy.

I was quite tickled by the description of copper as "rare and expensive" - I mean, compared to some things I guess, but it's the eighth most-mined element, and a lot easier to extract than most of the more abundant ones (which would be why we as a species worked the copper/tin alloy bronze before we even got to iron). Also the article's sentence structure managed to imply that copper being used in electronics is a new finding from the Galvorn people, which is just hilarious. :D

Looking at DexMat's own blog, what they're doing is just renaming their "aligned carbon nanotube materials" to Galvorn(TM)(R)(Patent Probably Pending). It looks like this is an emerging field (probably inspired by the graphene discoveries a few years back), so Galvorn doesn't seem to be an obvious fake.

What it is...

... is a pretty straightforward violation of the Tolkien Estate's current FAQ.

hS