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Comment by liopleurodon | Hacker News Reader

Apparently it's transparent.

I'll have to remember this the next time I need to build a whale tank

> But a team in the US showed this isn't the case for metallic vanadium dioxide (VO2) - a material that's already well known for its strange ability to switch from a see-through insulator to a conductive metal at the temperature of 67 degrees Celsius (152 degrees Fahrenheit).

The next time you need to do whale sous-vide, i think.

The transition temperature can be tuned with dopants[0]. And the switching happens from transparent at low temperatures to reflective at higher temperatures.

That said, its highest transmittance is in the infrared, it's not that great in the visible spectrum.

[0] https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/bitstream/handle/10220/25845/for-your-...

Is that a Star Trek movie reference?

Yes. Original series when they went back in time. Scotty showed an earth engineer how to make transparent aluminum.

A keyboard? How quaint!

proceeds to type at 400 wpm...

Also makes you wonder how he was going to input that into the computer using voice commands.

It's not as surprising of you can imagine all the stuff probably going on in the background when you say "<assistant of choice>, play the next episode of Star Trek on my TV"

Lots of stuff going on, but based on concepts known to the developers. He had to teach the computer how to synthesize a hitherto unknown substance. Can't get around the information entropy of the stuff he'd've had to input into the computer.

How hard is it to say "take $known_aluminum_alloy and add $dopant using $heating_process"?

Obviously by using the corded speakerphone "Hello computer".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqiDu1BQXY

Using mostly his index fingers.

Suck it vim users, your editor has nothing on MOLECULAR DESIGN for System 3.0

> how to make transparent aluminum

Which is just alumna (aluminium oxide, AKA ruby and other gems).

Homelab torch process can be seen on YouTube

Aye laddie. Indeed.

Now if we only had computers we could talk to. (Without trying to sell us something in the process.)

I never understood why the whales needed to see outside their tank.

I never understood why the tank needed to be transparent.

It didn't need to be, it was transparent because it was glass.

They traded the formula for the glass. The company didn't manufacture transparent aluminum on the spot and give it to them.

My question is more, why not I’m just use steel or aluminum?

Because then you wouldn't get to see the whales.

It's just a movie. :-)

Plexiglass: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Plexicorp

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