First nuclear detonation created ‘impossible’ quasicrystals | Hacker News Reader

First nuclear detonation created ‘impossible’ quasicrystals

nature.com

103 pointssova36 comments

This is amazing, I remember when the Nobel prize was received for the discovery of quasicrystals while I was getting my PhD in materials science.

The amazing thing about these materials to me is that they are found in apace rocks that land on earth.

That means they are extremely stable for long distance interstellar travel.

This discovery means that humans may actually have a way to manufacture these in the future, it would just require ridiculous energy densities. Maybe this would be manufacturing to do on Mars?

You wanna blow up nuclear bombs on Mars to make some quasicrystal trinkets? I don't think this is a good idea. Why not just do it on Earth? It's simpler that way. No need to go to Mars, for one.

Maybe make them on the Moon. We can then safely observe the manufacturing process.

or solar orbit, where the fallout will be efficiently dispersed throughout the solar system and beyond.

You gotta add a little bit of entropy to the solar system every now and then to keep things interesting

Related by Kurzgesagt "What if we blow up the moon?" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEfPBt9dU60

They already can be manufactured. That's how they were first discovered.

My recollection of the paper on the natural examples was that it was quite a long and exhaustive search through mineral specimens with likely candidate compositions before they found the natural one.

In the same way that ancient humans made timekeeping devices with a bowl with a hole in the bottom... one might hope for a superior method

Indeed one might, but one should not look first to freaking nukes.

You can buy them in the form of Cybernox nonstick pans. Unfortunately the things are somewhat susceptible to chloride corrosion - not the best thing for cookware!

I recall seeing an ad, when I was a kid, that bald dude selling non-stick pans by blowing an omelete. I thought it was silly.

Is cleaning a pan really that much work?

if you could buy one of two cheap pans, where the only obvious difference was that one took no effort to clean and the other took some effort, which would you take?

Probably there are other differences, but I said only obvious differences thus leaving out any difference you would have to spend some hours to figure out what they were before buying your cheap pan.

Sure. I get your point but it's not like we buy stuff in a vacuum either.

The other significant difference only becomes apparent in a couple of years: the non-stick pan won't last. The coating starts to flake off.

So if you're really in a situation where you could buy only one of the pans, you should buy the one without non-stick coating. It'll last a lifetime.

I bought two expensive ones. Read all about how to look after them. Despite many efforts over ages I couldn’t get it right and finally threw them in the trash. I’d rather have a subscription to inexpensive non stick pans.

I don’t want to season pans. I want to eat dinner.

I've been using a steel pan lately, it takes a bit of practice to use less heat, but works just fine for everything (except tofu, haven't figured out that yet; and you have to use actual butter for some stuff, vegetable oil is not quite enough for fish or eggs). If something sticks or dries on it, a wire sponge and some soap water gets it off in an eyeblink.

I've never seasoned a pan. I have a cast iron pan, but someone's done the hard work on seasoning it, probably long before I was born (found and kept the pan when we were cleaning up my late grandmother's place for sale back in 00's). I use it for pancakes and such.

I also use a steel pan, but it takes practice and is only worth it for meat based dishes or cooking a full on dinner.

If I want some fried eggs in the morning I reach for ceramic pan, it's fast, uses minimal oil and no fuss.

If you only use wooden or plastic utensils, you ought to be able to get more than "a couple of years". I have been using my Tefal frying pan and wok since 2010 and the coating is still there and still perfectly intact.

Plastic utensils.

Is using a plastic utensil in boiling vegetable oil a good idea?

No reason you can't use a rubber/plastic spatula when just frying eggs or making pancakes.

You've never had to spend entire minutes scrubbing because some gunk got badly stuck to a pan or dish? Over the life of a pan it's a lot of work, compared to the effort it takes to get a nonstick one.

Yes. Yes I have. And that pan is older than me. It will probably out-live me too. The valuable lesson I learned about cooking is very simple.

Pay attention.

I rarely have to scrub anything going on months to years.

I once tried using a cheap wok pan to cook some rice and veggies, but due to how hot its bottom got (didn't have another pan), I ended up having to scrub it for about 30 minutes. Certainly taught me a thing or two.

Counterpoint: not everyone wants the cognitive load of having to pay constant attention to what they're doing and neither should they.

> not everyone wants the cognitive load of having to pay constant attention to what they're doing and neither should they.

That's an answer so typical of our generation. A symptom of the uncertainty that pervades our lives - that we need to justify not paying attention to any single thing or doing it properly.

Where would we rather spend that "cognitive load"? Snapchat?

What possible reason can we find to justify not paying attention while having a 150¤C pan with boiling vegetable oil.

That statement is just borderline reckless if not silly.

"Where would we rather spend that "cognitive load"? Snapchat?"

World is getting more and more difficult to deal with, renting the public bike in London now requires accepting a 42 page document.

I deal with more 'agreements' "lisences" and "acceptable use policies" in a week than my father did in a year.

I have one of these. the non-stick qualities are extremely underwhelming and bested by the cheapest teflon pan.

I mean for civilization usage:) I want a QC bike frame (or a starship fuselage)

> The amazing thing about these materials to me is that they are found in apace rocks that land on earth.

> That means they are extremely stable for long distance interstellar travel.

No, that means that they are either stable for long distance interstellar travel, or they are created in the high-temperature high-pressure environment that is created when the rock is aerocaptured by and impacted into the planet.

I think it is no suprise that similar materials are found around nuclear detonation sites and extraterrestrial impact craters: the energy release is on a similar large scale and similarly instantanious.

The DOI link doesn't work for me. This seems to be the article - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101350118

The Youtube channel "Veritasium" featured a great video on Penrose tilings and their relationship to quasicrystals [0]. A fascinating example of a mathematical discovery with a previously unsuspected physical incarnation.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48sCx-wBs34

Very off-topic, but I recently learned that one of the first nuclear detonations possibly (its unknown and disputed) sent the first man-made object into space (a large manhole like cover to seal the bombsite). Nice YT video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSeL5c65v-g

A V2 rocket reached space in 1944, before the first nuclear test.

Of course nobody really knew or agreed where "space" started back then, so... "This particular altitude was not considered significant at the time" ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_18014

Steinhardt's book "The second kind of impossible" describes his involvement with quasi-crystals. It's very worthwhile.

>"Impossible symmetries

Quasicrystals contain building blocks of atoms that — unlike those in ordinary crystals — do not repeat in a regular, brickwork-like pattern. Whereas ordinary crystal structures look identical after being translated in certain directions, quasicrystals have symmetries that were once considered impossible: for example, some have pentagonal symmetry, and so look the same if rotated by one-fifth of a full twist.

Materials scientist Daniel Shechtman, now at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, first discovered such an impossible symmetry in a synthetic alloy in 1982. It had pentagonal symmetry when rotated in each of various possible directions, something that would occur if its building blocks were icosahedral — that is, had a regular shape with 20 faces. Many researchers initially questioned Shechtman’s findings, because it is mathematically impossible to fill space using only icosahedrons. Shechtman ultimately won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery.

[...]

Quasicrystals might also form in other materials that were generated in violent conditions, such as

fulgurite, the material made when lightning strikes rock, sand or other sediments."

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

>"Fulgurites (from the Latin fulgur, meaning "lightning") are natural tubes, clumps, or masses of sintered, vitrified, and/or fused soil, sand, rock, organic debris and other sediments that sometimes form when lightning discharges into ground. Fulgurites are classified as a variety of the mineraloid lechatelierite.

When ordinary negative polarity cloud-ground lightning discharges into a grounding substrate, greater than 100 million volts (100 MV) of potential difference may be bridged.[2] Such current may propagate into silica-rich quartzose sand, mixed soil, clay, or other sediments, rapidly vaporizing and melting resistant materials within such a common dissipation regime.[3] This results in the formation of generally hollow and/or vesicular, branching assemblages of glassy tubes, crusts, and clumped masses.[4] Fulgurites have no fixed composition because their chemical composition is determined by the physical and chemical properties of whatever material is being struck by lightning.

Fulgurites are structurally similar to

Lichtenberg figures

, which are the branching patterns produced on surfaces of insulators during dielectric breakdown by high-voltage discharges, such as lightning.[5][6]"

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

>"A Lichtenberg figure (German Lichtenberg-Figuren), or Lichtenberg dust figure, is a branching electric discharge that sometimes appears on the surface or in the interior of insulating materials. Lichtenberg figures are often associated with the progressive deterioration of high voltage components and equipment. The study of planar Lichtenberg figures along insulating surfaces and 3D electrical trees within insulating materials often provides engineers with valuable insights for improving the long-term reliability of high-voltage equipment. Lichtenberg figures are now known to occur on or within solids, liquids, and gases during electrical breakdown.

Lichtenberg figures are natural phenomena which exhibit

fractal properties.

The emergence of tree-like structures in nature is summarized by constructal law."

PDS: My own curiousity, with respect to Fulgerites, is:

I wonder if they possess any significant electric and/or magnetic and/or radio frequency spectrum -- field(s)...?

Or any other interesting/unusual properties...

Perhaps they'd make interesting transducers for some type of electromagnetic spectrum field, and/or antennas... or maybe just a diode or resistor for electricity... or some other type of field...

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