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Experts Cast Doubt on 'Alien Alloys' in the New York Times' UFO Story (scientificamerican.com)
What to make of a Las Vegas building full of unidentified alloys? The New York Times published a stunning story last week revealing that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) had, between 2007 and 2012, funded a $22 million program for investigating UFOs (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source). The story included three revelations that were tailored to blow readers' minds: 1. Many high-ranking people in the federal government believe aliens have visited planet Earth. 2. Military pilots have recorded videos of UFOs with capabilities that seem to outstrip all known human aircraft, changing direction and accelerating in ways no fighter jet or helicopter could ever accomplish. 3. In a group of buildings in Las Vegas, the government stockpiles alloys and other materials believed to be associated with UFOs. From a Scientific American report: Points one and two are weird, but not all that compelling on their own: The world already knew that plenty of smart folks believe in alien visitors, and that pilots sometimes encounter strange phenomena in the upper atmosphere. Point No. 3, though -- those buildings full of alloys and other materials -- that's a little harder to hand wave away. Is there really a DOD cache full of materials from out of this world? Here's the thing, though: The chemists and metallurgists Live Science spoke to -- experts in identifying unusual alloys -- don't buy it. "I don't think it's plausible that there's any alloys that we can't identify," Richard Sachleben, a retired chemist and member of the American Chemical Society's panel of experts, told Live Science. "My opinion? That's quite impossible." Alloys are mixtures of different kinds of elemental metals. They're very common -- in fact, Sachleben said, they're more common on Earth than pure elemental metals are -- and very well understood.
Clearly these so called "experts" haven't ran their little tests on Twinkies or Mountain Dew... there's nothing in either of those that can be identified.
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I do not see any contradiction in those statemenst. As an example IF I analyze graphene with an AAS (a techniques for knowing the element of your sample) or with an XPS or with secondary scatter emission or with XRD (powder not monocrystal) I would find that graphene is made of C and this is correct. That won't explain ANY of its unusual and wonder properties.
So you can have an alloy with known element with unknown properties. If you gave graphene or even a metamaterial to a scientist to analyse to a scientist 20 years ago he would have probably said "these are unknown materials". it does mean:"we do probably know how they look and what are their elements but we do not know how they made it or what are their properties".
So some people seem to read and understand only what want to see and understand...
Look at the uses for high-temperature alloys like Inconel and Hastelloy. Everything from cryogenic conditions to rocket engine parts and nuclear reactors. Just the things you would want from a UFO
https://www.hpalloy.com/Alloys...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
But rocket motors are already beyond alloys. They also require ceramics and other materials based on silica
https://www.extremetech.com/ex...
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
that they can make unidentifiable alloys, how come they can't keep pieces of their space ships from falling off? How come so much of the stuff falls off that it takes "a group of buildings" in Vegas to hold all of it?
I'd expect this sort of BS from Fox News "science" reporting (like the mystery planet that was supposed to crash into earth about a month ago), but NYT?
FTA:
Here's the thing, though: The chemists and metallurgists Live Science spoke to -- experts in identifying unusual alloys -- don't buy it. "I don't think it's plausible that there's any alloys that we can't identify," Richard Sachleben, a retired chemist and member of the American Chemical Society's panel of experts, told Live Science. "My opinion? That's quite impossible." Alloys are mixtures of different kinds of elemental metals. They're very common -- in fact, Sachleben said, they're more common on Earth than pure elemental metals are -- and very well understood.
Just because you know the composition of something doesn't mean you know how to make it. Nobody knows how to make real Damascus steel anymore. There are still discoveries being made about new crystal structures, compounds and alloys. That is before you get into the many different ways to temper or treat metals in the process of creating a particular alloy. Even if you can find one way to create a particular alloy, does the process scale to industrial levels? Creating a few molecules in a lab with special equipment and processes is a very different thing than creating it by the ton in high speed processes. Even using the same recipe with different equipment can potentially produce different outcomes.
Consider FOGBANK
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Humanity knew properties of graphite, but graphene (which should be same thing) turned to be very different.
I've worked as a research scientist in research groups that belonged to the absolute top of the field for over 15 years and I never saw any influence of aliens into our field. I worked for many years in nanotechnology, a field in which if the story about those alloys is true you would expect aliens to meddle. I am very sure that every high-tech thing on this planet is conceived and built by people, whether in the past (pyramids, the tomb of Tutanchamon) or now.
-- Cheers!
I totally support this idea; it'll come to fruition sooner or lacer, we'll simply have to take the plunge. Our cup will truly runneth over. When historians discuss among themselves of when metallurgy went all soft and rounded, they will naturally cleave to our age, +5 insightful, politely asking each other, "a nipple for your thoughts, good sir?" It is virtually certain that some will make some excellent points, erecting fine impressions upon the cloth of history.
I have to go take my meds now, sorry.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
> If you gave graphene or even a metamaterial to a scientist to analyse to a scientist 20 years ago he would have probably said "these are unknown materials".
Philip Russel Wallace published a thorough analysis of the properties of graphene in 1947. Others discussed it as early as 1856. In 1948 Ruess and Vogt published electron microscopy images of proto-graphene a few molecules thick. What was new 15 years ago was an efficient method of producing it (the scotch tape method).
Someone analyzing graphene 20 years ago would be able to very easily identify it as an extremely thin, one molecule thin, piece of graphite, and they could refer to the P.R. Wallace papers to learn about it's properties. They'd then ask "how did you slice it so thin?!"
Graphene 20 years ago was roughly like an ant today - we can't make an ant, we do understand them.
Not really. It's actually quite interesting if you're into that kinda thing.
Or this kinda thing.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
When director Robert Wise test screened his classic movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, he was mortified when the audience laughed at certain scenes. Then he realized what they were laughing at: the futility of the military sending tanks to confront something so obviously beyond them. It was the dawn of what people were calling "the Atomic Age", and it didn't feel like a pinnacle in human history. More like standing for the first time on the shore of an ocean you hadn't realized existed.
Now let's imagine a civilization capable of interstellar travel visited the Earth. What reason would the have to be secretive about it? In fact it's presumptuous to assume they'd have any interest in us at all. To them we'd seem hardly different from animals. Chimps, after all, make twig-tools for fishing out termites. And the attitude that local populations and ecosystems need to be treated with respect is largely a product of our new awareness of Earth finite nature. When the planet seemed unbounded to us (as the cosmos would be for a spacefaring civilization) we had no compunctions about our impact on local fauna.
But rare visits by a civilization that had no particular interest in us could produce the appearance of more frequent but secretive visits. They wouldn't be hiding from us, so people would see them, but they wouldn't be visiting places like New York or Washington DC. Not visiting major centers of human power suggests to our parochial view that they're hiding from us, when it's just as possible that they're just picking random (to us) places, which on average will tend to be much more sparsely populated compared to a major metropolis.
Then what about the marvelous artifacts that supposedly exist? Why would they leave such precious things behind? Well, precious is in the eye of the beholder. Imagine you are exploring the home territory of an uncontacted people with stone age technology, if you dropped a gum wrapper the thing would be marvelous to them. Now as an enlightened modern person the notion would be mortifying; you'd pick up after yourself to avoid contaminating their culture. But if you had a more... Victorian attitude, you wouldn't give a flying fuck if the natives worked themselves up over a bit of tinfoil.
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It's not just the elements you combine which matters. The amount of each element you add can change the final alloy's characteristics. For example, steel (alloy of iron and carbon) becomes stronger as you add carbon. The carbon atoms wedge themselves in between the crystalline iron grains, making it harder for them to slide around (sliding is what gives metals their malleability), thus making the steel stronger (less bendy) than iron. But if you add too much carbon, you reduce the malleability so much that it becomes brittle. The microscopic structure continues to become stronger (the iron atoms don't slide against each other making it almost diamond-like in toughness), but the macroscopic structure now fractures - the crystalline metal grains which used to absorb energy by sliding around now absorb it by separating. And the combined result is weaker than iron in practical applications. Where the steel falls along this spectrum depends on the amount of carbon you add.
If it were just a simple combination of elements, then there would be a limited number of alloys, and an "unidentifiable" alloy would imply an unknown/undiscovered element. But because the amount of each element matters, there are literally an infinite number of possible alloys. And some of them may have a "sweet spot" in their desirable characteristics (like carbon does with iron to create strong steel). Not enough or too much of the alloying material and you've completely missed the sweet spot. (And there may even be multiple sweet spots - it all depends on how the half dozen elements you're alloying together interact with each other.)
So of course the DoD is going to be running experiments combining all sorts of different materials in different combinations and concentrations in search of possible alloys we've overlooked or haven't stumbled upon yet. And if they're smart they'd be cataloging their findings and storing the resulting alloys in a warehouse in case it's ever needed for future testing (so they don't have to create it again). And if they've got a particular combination and concentration of elements nobody has tried before, that would make it an "unkonwn" or "unidentified" alloy. Unknown until they make it and test it, that is.
If you gave someone a modern processor chip in 1950's. I expect that they would see it as an alloy of silicon and a bunch of other strange elements, embedded in plastic. I can well believe that a more advanced civilization could build devices atom by atom, and we would just see those devices as a alloy.