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Material Tougher Than Diamond Developed
sporkme has handed us a link to a New Scientist article. The piece outlines the development of a new substance reported to be stiffer than diamond. A team of scientists from Washington, Wisconsin, and Germany combined the ceramic barium titanate and white-hot molten tin with an ultrasonic probe. The new material was, in some tests, almost 10x more resistant to bending than diamond. Composite materials researcher Mark Spearing of Southampton University comments on the result: "The material's stiffness results from the properties of the barium titanate pieces, Spearing says. As the material cools, its crystal structure changes, causing its volume to expand. 'Because they are held inside the tin matrix, strain builds up inside the barium titanate,' Spearing explains, 'at a particular temperature that energy is released to oppose a bending force.'"
Stronger than CowboyNeal???? YOWZERS!! 8-)
No words of wisedom here.
the corny penis jokes!
Now I have to the jewelers and have that diamond ring exchanged for a barium titanate one...
Bend over, I'll show you something stiffer than diamond.
How does a newscientisttech.com get slashdotted after 22 comments?
Well, it's late... and this sounds really cool...
:)
And there's only 15 posts... so maybe somebody can copy/paste me as I think my IP has been bitchslapped to infinity.
Neways... this is cool news.
The tests were carried out at a variety of temperatures. Between 58C and 59C the samples became stiffer than diamond.
I'm not sure if this means that the only sweet spot is between 58 and 59. Somehow limiting, but noteworthy.
As the material cools, its crystal structure changes, causing its volume to expand.
Kinda like water.
Interesting stuff...
It's going to be very cool in the future when we have specific control over individual atoms and molecules, to be able to build something like this custom to our necessities.
I can imagine that once this matrix/crystal/material is better studied and nailed down, with nano abilities, we'll be able to make a material even STRONGER than this one. I would guess that using, yeap, diamond (carbon) into a similar matrix/crystal structure would make a kick-ass product.
Can't wait for the nano age... well... it might go well, it might go to hell.
Grey Goo is over-rated.
Something I like to tell people, so they can sort of "grasp" nanoTech and its posibilities, is regarding themselves. We all come from (with the exception of CowBoy Neal) a tiny spot of "stuff". The process goes something like
alcohol-hornyness-sex-conception-badtrip-birth-ene rgyIN-growth-humanBeing
From that tiny spot of stuff, comes out full fledged super AutoCAD instruction sets for everything from a nose, eyes, hair, skin, organs, hands, a brain, etc, etc. We never upload stuff to our bodies! We never update our DNA with "new one" because 'now we hit puberty'.
To me, it's amazing that we come out of that group of cells.
In the future, we'll grow buildings.
Recycling will be a zinch.
We will clean up the Earth to its pre-Industrial era state.
We will go to the Moon and Mars.
Poverty, illiteracy will go down, health will go up.
Cheaper ways of living will surface.
Energy will be abundant.
War will be 100 times more interesting, and probably destructive.
Changes in techonology will be even faster than today (duh)...
I'm sure uprising will ensue.
How do we work with the 'crazies'?
If everybody gets a small nanofactory...
What stops them from building a gun?
What stops them from building a flower?
If we control that, with something like "the feed" (thanks Neil), then who decides what can and what can't be built?
Government?
Which one?
THESE ones? I think all present ones fail the grade...
So who will control what?
Where and where?
Digital Rights Management?
BAHAHAHAaaa!!!!
Imagine if you will, a place where ThePirateBay.org carries torrents for AutoCAD files.
/. 2022: INTEL'S LATEST PROCESSOR LEAKED - TORRENT AVAILABLE
Download, unzip, crack, open, print.
Bam! Latest intel processor... couple of hours later. (minutes?!
Latest gadget from... hmm... let's pick a company... Apple!
Apple iPhone... Joe Johnsson buys it... goes to his nanoDeCompiler... makes a reverse engineered AutoCAD file (with a Linux box, of course -- can I get un-BitchSlapped now pleasE?), and uploads.
Bam! Bye bye sales.
Exactly the same problems we're seeing right now with fucking music (music people!!!! MUSIC!), we'll have in the future with "stuff".
Everything.
Uploaded.
Nice.
I mean... music/movies are chump-change in contrast to the future.
Open Source will be THE way to do stuff...
I can see, what we see now with things like SourceForge.net, but with future things.
Say I'm a Volvo freak... and I spend lots of manhours designing/testing/re-prototyping a super cool turbocharger made out of (HA!) this new diamond/barium material.
Just for the sake of "pride in my work", I uploaded, no strings attached.
Anybody that wants it can get it.
Quickly, people download it, build it, find
Unless they've "Discovered" Chuck Norris.