Discovery of a multicomponent alloy forged by the Hiroshima atomic blast | Hacker News Reader

Discovery of a multicomponent alloy forged by the Hiroshima atomic blast

science.org

158 points_____k69 comments

The "AlAu4" structure comment got me reading about the aluminum-gold phase diagram. One component there, AlAu2, was infamous in the early IC industry for causing chip failures ("purple plague").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold%E2%80%93aluminium_interme...

Related: "Strange crystals found inside wreckage from the first nuclear bomb test" may 2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48155450 87 comments

> hiroshimaite

Today I learned an interesting new word, which is led me to its analogues:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitite

This is really worth a read. Although the origin is an airblast, ground structures and soil is evaporated too into an inhomogeneous plasma. The relative fast cooling adds to the crystal formation.

Interesting. Bring on the A-bomb foundries! Had this been discovered during the exploration phase of atomic bomb use we probably would have seen A-bomb foundry proposals.

There is a hypothesized process in this paper that sounds like a graduate thesis on its own.

What, you mean, like American Machine and Foundry building nuclear reactors?

https://www.ans.org/news/article-1858/elk-river-rural-americ...

No, I mean using atomic bombs to manufacture these alloys at scale. In the 50s a-bombs were proposed for all sorts of workaday uses. Imagine using a small a-bomb for mining just as we use ANFO today.

I am sure that somebody will take up the task of reproducing these alloys using intense heat from a non-atomic source. New alloys can be quite lucrative but developing them requires just as much experimentation as making new drugs. I'd imagine that getting to an alloy of 7 metals through progressive experimentation would take awhile. Now we know it's possible and have a possible production path. That is enough to spur some experiments down that road.

>Imagine using a small a-bomb for mining just as we use ANFO today.

Nuclear cement kiln

Nuclear pile jetter

Nuclear tunnel boring machine.

Nuclear Toothpaste

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doramad_Radioactive_Toothpaste

> Nuclear tunnel boring machine.

Don't give Elon ideas.

Both the US and the Soviet Union actually experimented with "nuclear fracking" in oil/gas fields. The Soviet Union also used atomic bombs to put out fires in gas fields as late as 1981.

They what?! Can we please get a link to this to read more?!

And yes, I have the same Google as you, but I'd love a link to your preferred telling of the tale of how the Soviets nuked a gas well fire just a couple years before I was born.

I recall we were seriously talking about using one during the early days of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. For a variety of reasons it wouldn’t have worked in that instance.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-soviets-nuked-gas-well-f...

Wikipedia has an article about it[0]. Gas had been leaking for three years before they were able to use a nuke to seal the well. Estimated that it was burning 12 million m3 of gas daily.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtabulak_gas_field

Interesting, however that was 1966:

> the explosive was detonated at a depth of 1,500 m (1,640 yd) on 30 September 1966. The hole that the explosive was lowered into had also been sealed with cement so as to prevent atmospheric radioactive contamination.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nat...

> The last nuclear explosion by the Program 7, codenamed Rubin-1, was performed in Arkhangelsk Oblast on September 6, 1988.

Although there is no separate page for that.

Soviets also blew up a 140kt bomb to make a lake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shagan_(lake,_Abai_Region)

My grandfather worked as the lead geologist on Project Rulison. That was the fracking shot in western CO.

Apparently the shot was quite successful as a natural gas fracking technique, but quite a bit of radon also was released.

See also: operation plowshare.

The idea was you could use nuclear bombs to dig canals. Or make harbors. Or really any large scale earth moving project. The U.S. did one test shot, a shallow buried bomb intended as a cratering charge. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.176944,-116.046111,4654m This ended up contaminating more people than any other test which put the breaks on that. The soviets had an equivalent study but tried a little harder and are now the proud owners of several new irradiated lakes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_(nuclear_test)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nat...

That whole effort was predicated on success of efforts to develop fission-free bombs. That never worked out, although the inertial confinement fusion program is in a way its descendant. The scale of ICF reactors shows why it didn't work out. A slight shame, since this might have made Project Pacer (exploding bombs in caverns to make energy) more feasible. There still would have been enormous tritium production/pollution.

  >The U.S. did one test shot

I'm seeing 11 shots total,[0] though Wikipedia lists even more.

"Nine were for the purpose of developing an ultra-low fission thermonuclear explosive for use in nuclear excavation projects and one each was for the development of special emplacement techniques and for a small diameter, ultra-low tritium producing explosive for hydrocarbon applications such as Rio Blanco."

[0] Table 1 on page 7 (PDF page 11) https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/408695

There was some truly crazy shit happening in the late '50s-early '60s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_Low_Altitude_Missil...

Looks like every time a new “big thing” gets invented, the big thing becomes like a hammer and everything else turns into the proverbial nail. Then it was atomic everything, not its AI everything. Same pattern repeating.

IIRC in “Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman” he recalls being asked during Manhattan Project (?) for ideas to commercialize atomic energy and they patented whatever the scientists brainstormed up.

I bet a nuclear foundry can be bundled with atomic mining ala Project Plowshare. Guess we are lucky we didn't get the future the atomic age promised.

Using the Project Orion spacecraft to get there, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propu...

Explosion welding is a real thing that’s a tiny bit like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosion_welding

Sounds like an interesting idea and I think there are things like this being done but, couldn't we accomplish the same thing on a smaller scale without all the destruction? What about fusion welding once we get that more locked in? I know it's still a WIP but if we're getting to "millions of degrees", it could speed up the process if we're able to localize the fusion. Also, what about cold fusion? The problem on any of these is the cost -- it may be quicker/better but if the cost is way too high, it's not worth it. Maybe in the future it'll be cheaper/easier.

A disgustingly large and powerful pressurized microwave would likely be sufficient if "all" they need to do is spray various mixes of vaporized metals and water into plasma. I don't know that we've had too many justifications to build these otherwise

The tiny spheres of this alloy mixed into a mess of other stuff remind me of Primitive Technology's mostly successful attempts at smelting iron the hard way. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA

> I don't know that we've had too many justifications to build these otherwise

I don't know about you, but "spray various mixes of vaporized metals and water into plasma" sounds cool. If I had tens of millions of dollars, I'd pay to see that.

Could probably get styropryo to do it for a good bit less. The stuff he's doing on his second channel recently is so damn cool https://youtu.be/0Y-9GbsS9Fg

My comment was a bit trite but I was actually hoping for a reasonable shot at doing something worthwhile.

My expectations for doing it properly would be:

- facilities. Sure, high power microwaves and pressure chambers and combining the two may not be THAAAT expensive. But doing it in a calibrated fashion to have a chance to produce predictable repeated results isn't without some details.

- staff. I'd want at least 3 qualified people on it. Preferably multiple teams competing for results exploring different paths of interest.

- timeframe. I'd expect such a thing to last at least 3 years at an absolute minimum but that might only be enough to get to the hardware to a "calibrated repeatable" stage. So probably 5 to 10 to have any hope of meaningful results.

- money. That "if I had tens of millions" is a personal view of my own monetary worth. I wouldn't want to see ALL that used up in this, but I'd put forward a good fraction of it.

Somehow it reminds me of FMA's take on Philosopher's Stone https://fma.fandom.com/wiki/Philosopher%27s_Stone

It is a previously not-made mix of metals. But nothing in the paper explains why it is interesting. Sure we have not seen alloys with that exact combination, but nor have we seen that one with 2% more Si and 3% less Mo. It lacks a "why do we care?" section. Nor are documented any interesting properties of the same other than existing. What did i miss?

'natural experiment' doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I don't know enough about chemistry to tell if this alloy has potentially interesting properties, or it's just interesting because it's something we weren't previously aware of as being possible.

Oklo, Gabon appears to have run a nuclear reactor about 1.7 billion years ago, though whether you can get a natural nuclear explosion on some chunk of rock somewhere might be difficult to tell.

This alloy is naturally the macguffin in a Godzilla and/or Sentai film.

Not the most economical manufacturing process, it has to be said.

You can probably skip the town in the ingredient list.

I know you’re joking, but unironically this might be untrue. One catalyst might be something only found in cities!

Granted, you could always replace the city with the catalyst of course :P

The paper explains it more as an experimental process than a manufacturing process. Each granule of hiroshimaite captures a "unique" micro-environment. One could imagine an ethical version of this involving conventional explosives in a controlled environment containing a variety of metallic samples of different compositions.

Metals refining in space or a no atmosphere place like the moon. If an alloy is discovered that has properties we want I can see some future civilization popping nukes like pellets to produce it.

Using conventional explosives is a real thing that exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosion_welding

There were some nuclear fracking experiments where the nukes cost in the range of a few hundred thousand dollars. It's probably cheaper than you think.

The real expense is in rebuilding the city every cycle

It's a real blast, though.

(In all seriousness, I hope we never, ever in this lifetime cause humans to suffer like we did on that day)

I mean, I'm probably just being contrarian and I too would appreciate it if people stopped suffering, but like, people are suffering worse than that right now as we type this.

Sure.

70,000 dying in a flash certainly puts an end to their suffering.

They did not get vaporized in the fireball. We have survivors at the hypocenter. Intense burns and radiation poisoning killed most plus conventional blast damage mechanisms. Half the acute deaths happened after the first day.

Sure, and I dunno, it probably does no one any good, I just find it mildly annoying when people treat the atomic bombs dropped in ww2 as some kind of completely incomparable atrocity.

Like the beatles joke, "were the atomic bombs the worst atrocity of all time? They weren't even the worst of that war!"

I mean, we don't really need to rank awful things, we can acknowledge anything beyond a certain level is awful without comparing them, but lots of awful things happen without involving nukes.

They were certainly a novel way of causing a reasonable amount of death and destruction.

Fortunately the novelty wore off fair swiftly.

> Fortunately the novelty wore off fair swiftly.

The application sure, but the novelty of it being nuclear rather than conventional kept parties interested in it for quite a while!

>"were the atomic bombs the worst atrocity of all time? They weren't even the worst of that war!"

that's debatable. like, worst single instance atrocity? possibly is

I mean, even only considering bombing raids, more people were killed during the various fire bombing campaigns against japanese cities and so on, granted those took 1000 planes instead of 1, but somehow I doubt the people burning to death considered that a meaningful distinction.

Well it appears to be the cheapest method known to produce at least some metal alloys.

It might be a bit tough getting the permits from the EPA.

Call it the Cheeto in Charge Manufacturing Center and you'll get a fastpass

It's more of an exploration technique.

Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening which is also based on randomness.

So to make this I just mix up the metals and wait for Mango Mussolini to press the button?

it took so long to find because it's been hiding

Deliberately forging metals with nuclear blast is something we need to put in future sci-fi

In a short story titled 'Glory' Greg Egan described process where hydrogen and anti-hydrogen are forged together into a thin needle:

> The end point of this process of nuclear sculpting was a sliver of compressed matter and antimatter, sandwiched together into a needle one micron wide.

Which then explodes in a controlled way

Interesting but that doesn't scratch the itch. I imagine something more like crude metalurgist dwarves, assembling a neutrino detector sized ball shaped room, 1 kilometer underground, with demon core shaped device suspended on detonation wires. Aliens thought giving us nuclear fusion would annihilate us without them trying, but we started to using it to make shiny jewelery and fancy chopsticks.

Did they disclose the amount of human souls in that alloy?

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