MIT grad students achieve long-sought stable nanocrystalline metals | Hacker News Reader

MIT grad students achieve long-sought stable nanocrystalline metals

kurzweilai.net

34 pointsSwizec8 comments

Not entirely sure if this is legal (I'll take it down if it's not), but here's the full article (PDF warning): http://db.tt/ws6QSyVa

Not sure if it's legal, but you have my thanks!

Sorry but the copyright does say Copyright 2012 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science; all rights reserved. And the license at the top says "personal non-commercial use only" which I think this violates... I'm not a lawyer though.

Thank you for saying "MIT grad students achieve" instead of "MIT achieves"!

  > remained stable for a full week at a temperature of
  > 1,100 degrees Celsius

This statement is too ambiguous to me. Did it break down after a week, or did they just stop testing after a week?

Apparently the latter. I glanced at the PDF and saw no mention of grain growth after that point. Apparently, a week is plenty of time for the processing such an alloy would normally undergo.

Could the metals made with this process then be woven into cables, to make (perhaps) an orbital tether / space elevator? Or are carbon nanotubes still the best option in that area?

It would depend on the types of stress that the material is good at withstanding. As far as I know, an orbital tether / space elevator would mostly need to be resistant to tensile stress.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(mechanics)

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