Negative CTE material

florescent_beige writes "An article on Yahoo talks about zirconium tungstate (ZrW2O8), a material that has a negative coefficient of thermal expansion over a wide range of temperatures. Being non-toxic, it has applications in dentistry, as well as metallurgy and optics. Johns Hopkins physicyst Collin Broholm describes the physics behind the behaviour."

Comments

Thermal stability is not new

[Rick the Red]

By blending materials that shrink when heated with more traditional substances that expand when heated, scientists could create a composite that neither shrinks nor expands as the temperature changes.

Scientists could create? Engineers already have! Boeing did this when they made the framework for the Hubble space telescope, by carefully balancing the mix of carbon fibers and resins. Hubble depends on this feature. You certainly can't have the distance from the mirror to the sensors changing as it goes in and out of the Earth's shadow.