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Dry Ice Made into Super-tough Glass
janus zeal writes "A form of solid carbon dioxide that could be used to make ultra-hard glass or coatings for microelectronic devices has been discovered.
The material, named amorphous carbonia, was created by scientists from the University of Florence in Italy.
Writing in the journal Nature, the team says the material was theoretically possible but had never been created.
It was made by squeezing dry ice, a form of carbon dioxide used to create smoke in stage shows, at huge pressure.
Scientists are interested in the new material because of the potential applications. Also, they believe it could give them clues to the processes that happen in the center of huge gas giant planets such as Jupiter."
This is a hell of a thing if hey manage to find a way of making it stable at room teperature and pressure - a glass that has a similar strength to diamond made from a highly available source material? I can see a ridiculous number of uses for this!
open your mind too much and your brain falls out!
This could be really big for space travel if it overcomes the main shortfall of common glass windows: sagging and ultimately flowing right out of the window frames over time. This is a huge barrier to the long-term space travel needed to get to other solar systems. Just imagine how fast normal glass would deform if they spun the space ship to maintain 1G! Does anyone know if this new glass is more flow-resistant?
It's also worth noting that this stuff doesn't do so well under normal temperature and pressure. It seems like it would be great for space travel since there's almost none of either out there.
True, but it does consistently reward us for methodically searching for interesting things in unusual places.
Think of it as a form of assay: You assay every square mile of territory, not because you like assaying, or you think there's something worth mining in every square mile of territory, but to find out which square miles have something worth mining.
I'm not paying for science for the sake of science. I'm paying for a thorough assay of the territory.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
At least I read the article!
Damn...
I always seem to get +5 Funny and never anything else so my karma is only good.
Do Ihave to beg for +1 Insighful?
Bet this
Well, just goes to show how useless the slashdot moderation system is.
That, or not enough people are meta-modding.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?