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.

purity

[TheSHAD0W]

Several SF authors have predicted that electronics manufacturing would eventually move to space because it'd be easier to produce purer semiconductor crystals in microgravity. Maybe the time has come?

Re:purity

[myowntrueself]

"because it is RESISTANT to crystallization under such conditions"

Heres a thought.

Will this sort of effect be important in hibernation and cryogenic storage of human beings?

Think about it like this, we develop a way to freeze people and thaw them out, test it for a few years here on Earth, deploy the system for space trials and find that the human body reacts quite differently to crystalisation under microgravity.

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.

Take THAT, space science nay-sayers!

[TripMaster Monkey]

This article is a perfect example of the sort of technological advances that will be possible when we establish a space habitat capable of sustaining industrial production. Microgravity is a condition that is almost impossible to replicate here at the bottom of the gravity well, and we are just beginning to realize the applications.

Up-to-date

[Anonymous Coward]

April 14, 2003... Slashdot is really a frontrunner. Next they'll report that Bush won a second term in office...

Serious topic

[Quentusrex]

Only a few serious answers so far, but do you realize how important this kind of work could be? He has proven a concept. Now it is much more likely for a corperation to invest in space stations to build their products. I'm not saying it'll happen within the next year, but that is it closer. Now corperations will feel the investment is less risky with much more payoff. Can you imagine having your CPU made with the parts so much more pure then they are now? Engineers could build smaller chips because they wouldn't have to account for the impurities that naturally come in the materials.

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.)

Re:That might not be possible.

[vandemar]

Indeed--

Also intriguing to space researchers is fluoride glass. A blend of zirconium, barium, lanthanum, sodium and aluminum, this type of glass (also known as "ZBLAN") is a hundred times more transparent than silica-based glass. It would be exceptional for fiber optics.

A fluoride fiber would be so transparent, says Day, that light shone into one end, say, in New York City, could be seen at the other end as far away as Paris. With silicon glass fibers, the light signal degrades along the way.