Glass In Spaaaaace

AnKsT wrote to mention an article on NASA's site about creating and manipulating glass in space. From the article: "In microgravity...you don't need a container. In Day's initial experiments, the melt--a molten droplet about 1/4 inch in diameter--was held in place inside a hot furnace simply by the pressure of sound waves emitted by an acoustic levitator. With that acoustic levitator, explains Day, 'we could melt and cool and melt and cool a molten droplet without letting it touch anything.' As Day had hoped, containerless processing produced a better glass. To his surprise, though, the glass was of even higher quality than theory had predicted."

Comments

Mr. Day? more Mr. Dooms Day

[CrazyJim1]

The only reason he wants to create glass in space is to one day fashion a giant magnifying glass in space. After calibrating it on ants, he plans to bring the world to its knees.

Build a better BONG

[drewzhrodague]

I wonder how long it will take humans to use this technology to build a better bong. Think about it -- bongs made in space...

Re:Build a better BONG

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I was just thinking about how much I would pay for something like that... Then I got to thinking, about thinking, about thinking, about thinking about this glass... and then I got like real confused and decided to use a pipe instead.

Nachos anyone?

What a relief!

[ScaryMonkey]

It's a good thing they figured out a way to make glass in space. Maybe now they come overcome the titanic production hurdles involved with producing glass here on Earth, and bring down its astronomic cost.

Re:purity

[joeybagadonuts]

Yea, but the shipping costs are just crazy!

Container-less Glass

[__aaclcg7560]

In microgravity...you don't need a container.

Right. Until there's an accident when someone is too busy playing with their velco stripe and a blob of molten glass goes into someone's eye on the other side of the station. If that happens over the state of California, Cal-OSHA will be all over the space station like Bill Clinton with an intern. They would have to shut down the space program until it was safe go back into space -- again.

Re:Purer carbon nanotubes too?

[PakProtector]

Is it easier to purify carbon nanotubes in microgravity too?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeees.

(Note: Length and pitch of the Long Answer may be affected by answerer's velocity relative to yourself.)

Transparent Aluminium

[vhogemann]

For those that didn't catch the bait left by the original poster...

Transparent Aluminium is a fictional material from the Star Trek universe.