Transparent Aluminium

Lynx writes "As the german magazine Spiegel reports, scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies have developed a transparent tile made from aluminium oxide pellets baked at 1200C. The material is very hard, and could be used as bulletproof windows." Use the fish.

Comments

star trek

[Fred Millington]

didnt scotty make this in one of the Star Trek films? I want some for my PC case.

Re:star trek

[Anonymous Coward]

A whale of an idea!

Re:star trek

[Anonymous Coward]

Those things sound great. However with all the current genetic research going on the next item will likely be Khan.:(

Scotty finally came through!

[ender81b]

Ha! That guy finally figured out those equations Scotty gave to him back in Star Trek IV! Another technological breakthough thanks to good 'ol Scotty.

Re:Scotty finally came through!

[Treeluvinhippy]

Ay, but how do we know he didn't invent the thing?

Re:Scotty finally came through!

[geekoid]

nerd alert.
he traded the formula for transparent alumium, for plexiglass.
they used plexiglass for the tank.

Combine some transparent aluminum...

[ARColeslaw]

...with some transparent concrete to build a transparent house! Now people who want to live in a "glass" house don't have to worry about throwing things at each other! Oh, but they still have to worry about being naked...

Re:Combine some transparent aluminum...

[sxpert]

Oh, but they still have to worry about being naked...

hehe, who cares... Clothes have not been invented to hide the body, but to keep warm.

The concept of hiding the body comes from the moral ineptness of some idiotic religious nuts during the dark ages

Re: Hardness and strength not the same thing.

[armb]

P.S. Considering the number of people who are confused about the difference between silicon and silicone, it's not surprising some can't tell the difference between aluminium and alumina (aluminium oxide).

(Aluminum/aluminium is just US/international spelling. Looking at the original German article it uses "Aluminiumoxid" where the fish translation has alumina.)

Re:Wait....

[onnellinen]

We should also ban dihydrogen oxide. It corrosive and can cause accidents in solid form.

--

Graceland tour guide: "Elvis has the left building".

Finally!

[Big Nothing]

I can walk around in public with my aluminum foil hat and not look stupid anymore!

Bulletproof Windows?

[Publicus]

Right!

Oh, wait, this one isn't about computers.. hehe.

The real application

[bunyip]

Unbreakable beer glass.

As an aficionado of German beer, I'm sure that this will be the first real application. They just want to get the military to pay for some cool toys along the way.

Re:star trek Kahn

[Tackhead]

> Designer babies worldwide are heavily selected to be male, perhaps on a rediculous scale, say 4:1 or more. Fast forward 30 years. [ ... ]
>
> Now comes some charismatic leader and, well, I hope I'm in the grave by that point.

What, you get pretty fireworks and solve the "too many males and not enough females" problem. Evolution in action ;-)

Re:star trek - isolinear chips

[igorxa]

well, if you remember, isolinear chips didn't come around till star trek:tng. the episode "relics" even brings this up. that's the episode with scotty and the dyson sphere. getting off the transporter pad, scotty asks a question about one of the panels, and giordi says they replaced the old crystal memory cards with isolinear chips. so according to the trek timeline, those are another 300 years off.

wow, i'm a dork

Good article, but...

[shoemakc]

Good read but It really doesn't explain how you could use it to say.....

..build a million gallon tank on a starship to transport two humpback whales 200 years into the future in a desperate attempt to save mankind from a strange monolith emitting beached whale sounds.

Jesus....what ever happened to investigative journalism these days? Also, wasn't this guy supposed to speek english?

-Chris