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Amorphous Steel
pfdietz writes "Researchers at Oak Ridge have achieved a holy grail of materials science: they have figured out how to produce amorphous (glassy) steel. The material is reported to be twice as hard and have twice the tensile strength of the strongest ultra-high tensile strength steel alloy."
Posting anonymously to protect my karma from Apple zealots.
...when they build themselves with this stuff?!?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Now all they need to do is figure out how to produce commercial amounts at a reasonable cost. However it is the same with all new materials due to the cost of reasearch in these areas.
I couldn't think of a sig.
before the nanotechnologists are able to reproduce this material an the atomic scale and essentially "grow" amorphous-steel items?
I want my +5 Broadsword of Nerdly Might!
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Now that amorphous steel is a reality, we are only one step away from transparent aluminum.
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Ok, somebody who understands materials science explain this to me, please: is the amorphous steel's hardness and strength greater because the non-amorphous, crystalline steel breaks easily along a row of atoms, as if along a perforation, while the amorphous steel, lacking such an orderly structure, lacks long runs of bonds along which breaks can be easily made?
Pictorially, is it like this?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
BTW, if you can't get a gmail invite from the poster above, they are giving one away periodically from the bottom of this Google Compute page.
There are several special metals in the Marvel universe that can have a place in the World of Darkness. These metals are usually very hard; much harder than mere steel, and they are not very ablative. They are also very rare, in general. One or two of them have special properties.
Adamantium
Adamantium is the hardest metal known to man, though it has not been made clear how dense it is. One would suspect that its density is roughly the same as that of normal steel, though a Storyteller can rule that it is as heavy as lead or as light as magnesium. At any rate, it would appear that no force on earth is sufficient to break or bend adamantium when it is at a normal temperature. Wolverine has used his adamantium-coated claws in Arctic climes as well as steamy jungles, so there is no reason to suppose that the metal becomes brittle at low temperatures. Judging from the number of times Wolverine's flesh has been roasted or vaporized right off of his skeleton in the comics, with no visible effect on the metal, we must assume that adamantium has a relatively high melting point. In any case, to be nice to Logan, it also seems likely that it has a fairly high specific heat capacity, at least for a metal. It may or may not be one of the magnetic metals- as seen in X-Men 25- because Magneto has enough raw power to reach down and repel protons in the raw, if he wants to.
There is a special process that allows adamantium in ionic (salt) form to be bonded to human bones- as in Wolverine's skeleton- or even human skin- as in Cyber's case. This process was developed by a Japanese scientist and villain called Dark Wind, and stolen (or sold) for the benefit of Department H, a branch of the Canadian Ministry of Defense. The following characters have some sort of connection to the metal, or are actually running around wearing it: Wolverine, Cyber, Dark Wind, Apocalypse, the Professor (not Xavier), Ultron, Lady Deathstrike.
Carbonadium
Carbonadium is a resilient, unstable metal that is much tougher than steel but more flexible than adamantium. It would seem as though it is a difficult and extremely expensive process to make carbonadium, which is probably an alloy of some kind, since there is apparently only one carbonadium synthesizer in the entire world. Carbonadium, like its more resilient counterpart adamantium, would appear to have a high specific heat capacity and melting point.
Carbonadium may or may not have one unique property: it may serve to stabilize a life-force vampire's condition, which would keep the mutant from having to drain the life force of others to survive. This may be a simple fact of Omega Red's condition, rather than something general to life-force vampirism.
Omega Red's tentacles are composed of carbonadium, and it is possible that his skeleton is also laced with the stuff. Other characters with a link to carbonadium include Wolverine, Sabretooth, Maverick, and John Wraith.
Omnium
Omnium is an extremely hard, extremely rigid metal that is likely to be second in resilience only to adamantium. In any case, it would seem that it is even less likely to bend without snapping than that metal. Omnium is not a commonly used or mentioned metal, but it has appeared on rare occasion in Marvel comics.
There was an acolyte of Magneto that had the power to change either himself or another person into an aware omnium statue. Other characters that have been seen using or testing the metal include Penance and the White
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
The article was a little thin, so I mosied on down to Wikipedia. I always get confused when I hear glassy, but it appears to be related to the material structure, not any transparency/translucency of the material.
Apparently amorphous metals are considered by some scientists to be a type of liquid rather than a solid. Kind of like glass, if you look at an old house you can see that the windows have slowly flowed downward.
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
TRANSPARENT ALUMINUM!
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Did you work that out on your own Mac user?
I think I may have to upgrade your classification to "Mostly Harmless".
http://www.liquidmetal.com/news/dsp.multimedia.asp
This could be good news to the Navy, especially in application to submarines. Using this metal they should be able to achieve the same hull strength with less material. That leaves more room to stuff electronics on the inside. This may also help subs go deeper/stay there longer.
Discover Magazine ran an interesting article on glassy metals back in their April issue, but to see the full article on-line you have to be a subscriber. However, if you can find someone who has a copy, it's a good read.
Yes, but is it TRANSPARENT? I want Transparent steel! I want an invisible jet! and an Invisible Sword! and an Invisible Toaster so I can see the toast get dark As It Happens! (grin)
The article doesn't mention if it has superior resistance to rust, though. This just talks about the crystal size.
QUESTION: It would seem to me that an ordered solid crystal, such as ordinary steel or glass, would have superior strength, due to every atom having the maximum number of molecular bonds with its neighbors.
Why, then, is a disordered solid superior in the tensile strength department? Are there any web links that show this effect?
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I seem to recall that some of these amorphous forms have much lower melting points than non-amorphous material. Does anyone know if this is true?
Annealing is letting the metal cool slowly, to maximize the crystal alignments and make the steel as soft as possible. Easy to work into shape.
Hardening. I heat the steel to its decolessant point, where the atoms are moving so fast they can no longer align in a magnetic field (so magnets don't stick), then quickly cool the steel. It is hardened and at the same time becomes more brittle.
Tempering is then applied, where the hardened steel is warmed gently to various degrees and again quickly cooled to remove just a bit of the brittleness and add "toughness" to the hard steel.
These folks merely quenched liquid steel. Woopie.
This isn't news, folks, it's highschool shop.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I can see the glass issue as a problem for some of the proposed uses, though. To retain its strength it would have to avoid crystallizing; if you used it for beams in a building, you would have to guarantee that a fire could not raise the temperature high enough long enough for the material to begin crystallizing. Once that happens, all your wonderful high-strength properties are ruined and you have to replace all that steel (assuming the building survives).
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
It's the planes that need this:
1. landing gear
2. arrestor hooks
For re-affirming my faith in Slashdot. I was thinking the exact same thing. =)
....
However, all kidding aside
By 'glassy', can anyone shed light on this actually infers? I'm thinking more to do with material versus optical properties. (Yes, I R'd TFA, and they certainly don't say anything about optical properties.)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...and it even appeared here on slashdot
I've understood the basics for some time, but the way you put it has to be the most clear description of exactly why it works that I've seen.
Now it makes sense why adding a metal as soft as zinc to aluminum gives you "aircraft grade" (7000 series) alumimum, which is twice the shear and tensile strength of "marine grade" (6000 series) aluminum, which contains the much stronger magnesium instead.
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Scotty gave us this technology back in 1986, I could have sworn I saw him entering it into a Mac Plus...
In the Discover article, one of the companies attempting to capitalize on amorphous metals is LiquidMetal. The stuff has been used in Head tennis rackets, golf clubs, hinges in cell phones, etc. A friend of mine has tested the head racket and he said you can really feel it return the energy better than other rackets.
Although the Discover article says that knives can be easily cast (e.g., for surgical purposes, disposable knives can be made much more easily), the metal isn't as hard as hand-made knives. This is sort of surprising given its glassy properties -- the ads by Liquidmetal show a steel ball bouncing for minutes on a slab of the stuff.
See this link http://www.rayrogers.com/lm.htm for one knifemaker's experience in dealing with the stuff (the RC rating is in the mid 50's if I recall). Still very promising technology though. Once the cost comes down I think it will have a very wide range of applications.
Underwater craft have already reached the bottom of the ocean without any need for any "amorphous steel". Mariana trench exploration happened quite a while ago with technology much more primitive.
While this amorphous steel is quite an achievement (I do not mean to slight this work), amorphous metals have been around since at least the 60's. A commercial example of this is the amorphous metal golf club head , which has been on the market for a number of years.
No, amorphous metals are not transparent. So even if we could make amorphous aluminum, you could not see through it. If you want to see through aluminum, you must still combine it with with oxygen to form alumina (or sapphire).
Underwater craft have already reached the bottom of the ocean without any need for any "amorphous steel". Mariana trench exploration happened quite a while ago with technology much more primitive.
Only specialized research (niche) subs with very limited capabilities "can't go any deeper". Their designs are not applicable to high performance high capability cost effective combat vessels. That said, those research subs are amazing.
Should we change that old saying to: 'People who live in amorphous steel houses shouldn't throw stones'?
Maybe they can watch Star Trek IV and implement Scotty's specs for creating transparent aluminium....
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
The big news, if this is true is that they are easier to make now. The way to get the disordered iron alloys before was to chill the molten metal at a rate of a few million degrees K per second - ie. solidify the molten metal in a tiny fraction of a second. This involved things like spinning water cooled copper drums for the commercially produced material, and the thickness was limited to a foil. This material has been used for things like transformer cores, just piling a lot of bits of foil on top of another.
Another thing is we are in the realm of semantics. Steel is what you have with a certain amount of carbon dissolved in iron giving some strength by pushing the iron lattice out of shape - and can be a mix of three different crystal structures. A glass is a fairly disordered structure. This material may be made out of the same stuff as steel, but doesn't have any of the crystal structures that make up steel so has completely different properties (strength, magnetic properties, toughness etc.). It can't be called steel anymore - it is something else that is stronger than steel.
They would not be competing with steel knives but with ceramic ones. Cermainc knives also do not need to be sharpened, however they are no good for prying type actions. I would guess that glassy steel knives would be the same way.
As for loosing thier edge knives loose it from that however you can remove most of that from a sharpening steel. You loose alot of your edge from hitting the cutting surface, which is the main reason(besides costs) cermaic knifes are used for soft stuff as opposed to dicing an onion. Will be interesting to see how much force is needed, and if we don't see a new material for knives.
And finally, those Supervillains will stop getting an armor-piercing bonus against me when I alter my physical structure. Thank you, Oak Ridge!
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
I am curious about the properties of amorphous steal when compared to other high strength materials like titanium. It would seem that the cost to produce this form of steel is high and that is suffer the same problems of associated with other ceramics
NASA has spent tens of billions on a series of programs to develop Shuttle replacements, and all of them have been total fiascoes. This is what appears likely to happen to a super-cool submarine development program; the political priorities will be to feed the best campaign contributors rather than the best technology, and the production of experimental boats will become an end in itself. That's the nature of Leviathan.
Turn the question around. The USA is the preeminent military power on the planet, and there is no hostile force that can deliver more than pinpricks (the bombing of the USS Cole was a tragedy, but to the fighting force of the USN it was negligible). Are submarines of any use to fight our current or foreseeable enemies? If not, it makes sense to let them go the way of the battleship.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Does anyone else foresee problems when a skyscraper made of these amorphous materials needs to be brought down in an urban environment. Fortunately with normal steel you can predict how it will react when you hit with a wrecking ball or detonate it but imagine the MESS that will be created when such techniques are used on a 1/5 mile superstructure.
I have a degree in Geology so forgive me. In volcanic glasses such as obsidian over the course of millions of years start to crystallize in a process called devitrification. IIRC for the most part there are no volcanic glasses that are more than 10 million to 30 million years old. Granted this is a long time, but amorphous steel could devitrify faster than volcanic glass. This could be serious for a building built out of amorphous steel.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
>You want to be Wonder Woman?
No you j'moke, he wants to stalk wonder woman. How else do you suggest he get to 1st base with a female superhero? Poetry? Not bloody likely.