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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.
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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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
TRANSPARENT ALUMINUM!
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Urban Legend, or at least most of the way to being one. The observed thickness variation is due to the Crown glass process of making glass sheets in that period: it involved spinning out a 5ft diameter disc of glass, thick in the centre and thin at the edges, and cutting the rectangles from that. There are apparently as many panes thicker at the top or the sides as at the bottom, although possibly some glaziers did have a preference for putting 'thick edge down'.
If glass did flow, extremely ancient (Myr) naturally occuring glasses like obsidian, fulgurites or tektites would have flowed into puddles! (they havent). Or if that doesnt convince you: the tolerances on the optical components of large telescopes are so fine that flow of the glass at the claimed rates would distort the image within days.
See, for example, "Do Cathedral Glasses Flow?", Am. J. Phys. v66, pp 392-396, May, 1998
NB. Glass can creep under loading, however - but thats for another thread.
Glass flowing is a myth.
... it's simply irregular hand-made glass.
Old glass manufacturing technics were VERY imprecise. You might end up with a pane that had a thicker edge, in which case you would naturally put it on the bottom for balance.
Or you might end up with fairly uniform edges but have an irregular surface that looked like it was "flowing" but was static. I have picture windows in my house that are about 70 years old that have this "flow" pattern and have had people remark that the liquid must be pooling
Even if glass -does- flow (see the "a" link at the beginning), math shows it would take millions of years to complete the process, meaning no glass made by man would yet show visible signs of deterioration.
And you're right, "glassy" in this case is about the physical structure of the metal, not the light transmitting/absorbing aspects though those are probably mildly affected (I imagine a glassy steel will hold a shiny polish better than a crystal steel).
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