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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.
We'll just get the cast from Star Trek (TOS) to act stupidly illogical to confuse and overload the robots.
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-Hoban Washburn
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?
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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
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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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Instead of ninth posting, you might want to read.
"The researchers have produced centimeter-sized pieces of the amorphous steel, and they feel that structural steel in bulk metallic glass form can be produced economically with traditional drop-casting methods, in which metallic glasses are made by pouring the hot liquid into a cold copper mold."
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.
Who needs the cast from Star Trek (TOS) to act stupidly illogical when you've got slashdot?
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
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.
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
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.
There's two aspects to the "strength" of steel, strength and toughness. Toughness describes the material's ability to withstand shock without permanent deformation, work hardening, et cetera. Strength describes the tensile strength, or how much weight it can hold.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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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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.
here is your "Invisible Toaster"
tuning forks.