New 'super ice' 10 times stronger, bringing it close to the strength of concrete | Hacker News Reader

New 'super ice' 10 times stronger, bringing it close to the strength of concrete

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134 pointsandrewl105 comments

Nice to see Pykrete being mentioned!

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

Fun fact: you don't need sawdust for pykrete. Adding any kind of material e.g. just newspapers can help similar to how rebar makes concrete stronger

Came to the comments for the pykrete reference, thanks for this.

Isn't adding newspapers just adding cellulose with some bonus ink?

It adds fiber, which is the key. The main weakness of ice as a crystal is that as soon as a crack forms it can spread along imperfections in the crystal structure. Putting fibre in it bridges those gaps and stops the cracks before they can get big enough to cause significant weakening.

But those fibers disturb the crystal lattice of the ice, so surely there is some tradeoff?

Alloying copper with tin to make bronze produces a material which is stronger and more durable than either component, and this works because the tin disturbs the copper's crystal lattice, which restricts the mobility of dislocations, which in turn reduces the plasticity of the alloy.

I do not know if cellulose fibers have a similar effect in ice, but in general, if you can trade the feature that is causing a problem for one that will not, you are improving things.

Aka it makes it less brittle, which ultimately makes it stronger?

It makes it less ductile, which means it's harder and more resistant to deformation. Bronze is more brittle than copper.

Adding fibres to already brittle materials improves their resilience to tensile forces mostly

So you’re saying it makes it more brittle? Because the opposite of ductile is brittle.

Or are you saying it increase yield strength, because that is a separate property, yes?

pip3 install pykrete

It provides the Krete framework for building your vacation to Crete island.

brew install pykrete

uv add pykrete

Jeez cmon

This type of ice composite would be super interesting for space structure construction. Melt cometary ice and mix it with additives of some kind and spin big cylinders out of it. You’d just have to make the surface reflective so it doesn’t melt, and possibly have some active cooling which you need anyway if anything inside makes heat.

The outer surface would probably be sprayed with something, maybe just reflective dust, to also keep it from subliming into the vacuum.

Extremely repairable, melts at human and equipment friendly temperatures, recyclable, doubles as an emergency water reservoir, and last but definitely not least a fantastic radiation shield.

Would also work for structures on Mars, the Moon, etc, but I’m a fan of the idea of settling space itself not another planet. Gravity wells are a trap.

Frozen fish is about the same strength as carbon fiber composite. You need carbide saw to cut it.

A local magazine did a test on ice cream cone melting. Some of those were still intact looking after sitting open at room temperature for an hour. Hooray for additives! So it's not a fundamentally new idea. These have to be safe to eat so maybe not too harmful for environment, though you never know.

Some parts of the world use ice roads and have struggled with warm winters. Maybe this could be used to improve the strength and extend time in the spring.

Which additive were they using? This article [1] use poliphenols, that are very different from the modified celulose in the top article.

[1] https://thisismold.com/uncategorized/the-science-behind-the-...

https://yle.fi/a/74-20234378

Carob extract and guar gum at least.

Thanks for the link. I took a look at the wikipedia pages of the gums and they are closer to the modified celulose in the main article than to the polyphenols in the article I linked.

It's very complicated to compare, because they use other sugars and there are a thousand of details that are important, like how long are branchy the molecules are, and also a million of details that are above my chemistry knodledge level.

As a persomal prefference, I'd call that jelly instead of ice cream. (And in a bad day that I want to lie a little just to be mean, I'd call them a piece of cake.)

One night I ended up with a scoop of ice cream I had to discard (I think I dropped it on the floor?) so left it in the sink. The next morning, it was still there. This was quite a decent ice cream, both in terms of flavour and texture; it was some of the gums holding it together. That became my new ice-cream of choice for making an affogatto without the icecream completely melting.

Ok stronger but doesn't it melt.. What are they going to do with it?

"The intended application isn't for aircraft carriers this time, but rather for construction projects in remote, cold areas where conventional building methods aren't easy to apply – like the Arctic and Antarctic.

With no concrete or steel required, and with ice and plant-based cellulose as the main ingredients, this could be a building material with a low carbon footprint that's also biodegradable."

Maybe we’ll be building ice caves on other planets after all

Hoth

Climate change feels like a grim reaper slowly stalking the value proposition of this technology.

Potentially becomes more viable in some locations. Or a future ice age.

Exactly what I wanted. A biodegradable building. I’m making mine out of compost!

Or maybe Mars?

warmer igloos obviously. :)

igloo skyscrapers

"Further down the line, this approach could open up a whole new landscape for materials used in packaging, construction, and more: Using a custom protein to bring two unlikely compounds (ice and cellulose) together."

Ice roads would be one application. Once it freezes, usual ferry services can often no longer be upheld. Then, one has to wait until the ice is thick enough to drive a car over the ice. If there was an easily applicable material to drive on ice less than usual 15-20cm of ice, that would decrease that waiting time quite a bit (and make ice roads/bridges possible in locations that would previously be unsuitable). And since it is ice, you can grow it somewhere else and transport in place with a barge.

Another is underground tunnel building. In sandy places, there are cases where they freeze the ground when building a concrete structure. If that could be reinforced with stronger ice, it might make working easier.

Similar, you can use ice as an temporary scaffold when e.g building a spanning bridge in winter. Stronger ice => easier application of said scaffold.

This sounds like a Rube Goldberg machine if I've ever heard one, for the nichest of niche applications.

I am pretty sure that 99.9% of material science covers very niche applications

Minecraft iceboat racing coming true?

It always sounds/looks like a trap to me when I hear about/see people driving whole-ass cars over 15cm ~= half a foot of ice. That's just wrong, and I would barely consider walking on ice that thick (thin).

(I'm telling you I'm from southern California without telling you I'm from southern California)

I have similar prejudices until I was dragged to a Minnesotan winter activity where everyone drives into the middle of a frozen lake and park in a large circle while a bunch of drivers race their cars in circles in the middle. It was surreal.

A guy showed me a video where they used a chainsaw to cut a giant circle in the ice and then used one of the drive wheels on an ATV to make an ice merry-go-round, it looked pretty fun! The long winters make people here in Minnesota a bit funny in the head lol

It’s not safe to drive a car on 6 inches of ice. It’s enough for a snowmobile or single-person ATV. I wouldn’t drive a car onto a frozen lake without 12 inches of ice, 16 inches if it’s a typical half-ton pickup.

I live in MN and have slept overnight on the ice (inside of a heated trailer) before.

https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/safety/ice/thickness.html

Obviously depends on the weight / load per area. Here in Stockholm, our skating club starts organizing trips from 5 cm (=2inch), but black ice should hold you from 3.2 or so cm. And you can hear from the sound of the ice approximately which thickness you are on. But this is done with security equipment and in a group, so more general rules apply to anyone without experience and acting on their own. Ice is dangerous, like the outdoors is always dangerous when taken without necessary precaution.

> 5cm

Obviously you know better than I do, but I'm literally uncomfortable here in bed just reading about skating over ice that thin. I'm going to go think about something else now...

So is everyone else in Sweden.

Ask them how big and how many stones they have to skate by that are clearly thrown by people from land who are unsure if the ice is thick enough despite a stone larger having already been thrown.

You can listen to some ASMR here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3O9vNi-dkA

(one of, if not the most experienced ice skater in the world having a blast)

Agreed, I don’t step onto a frozen lake unless there’s 10 cm of clear ice.

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

The original pykrete also melted less easily than pure ice, IIRC the sawdust acts as insulation or something.

Ice nine. Hooray

Wonder if this will then be used to fulfill the dream of shooting ice bullets which then melt inside the victim, leaving less evidence. If memory serves, I think the CIA explored this at some remote point in time.

I believe they used a different frozen compound than water, but yes.

It's a mix of water and celulose, do it does not disapear completely.

Add some enzymes to help reduce the remaining cellulose?

For fictional purposes, the ballistic information disappears. You might know the murder victim was shot with an ice bullet, but you won't be able to match it to a specific weapon.

Well no, because these aren't just ice-- it's an ice composite.

Mythbusters busted ice bullets. IIRC, the ice didn’t tolerate being shot out of a barrel and disintegrated.

sounds like a problem that might be solvable by a new super ice that is 10x stronger and "can absorb much more energy and deform gradually" instead of disintegrating.

what if you obtained your target's DNA and grew their flesh to make bullets out of? Add additive, freeze and voila!

i think there's an episode of Bones along those lines. maybe it was just a frozen blood bullet? i forget.

Coroners are confused about strange cellulose fibers through the entry and exit wounds. “It looks like they were attacked by… celery.”

Concrete's not strong enough to be used as a bullet either- you'd need something roughly the size of a shotgun slug. If you're going that big, you aren't going for subtle.

Make a bolt and use crossbow

Wouldn’t there still be evidence that some object penetrated the person and ripped them apart and caused them to bleed out?

Surely the CIA has untraceable ammo at their disposal already?

I imagine the boring truth is that, at least in America, getting shot with a normal "boring" bullet is less traceable than something special or something that mysteriously disappears.

They already have the heart attack gun and half a dozen other gadgets. An ice bullet would be just (pardon the pun) an icing on the cake.

The murder weapon is clearly the only gun around that can shoot ice bullets.

Ah but then the murder weapon would melt!

Finally the murderer would melt, because it was a robot made of ice.

The CIA already had the SA-C46[1] for that “unexplained death” scenario. I believe ot was developed “but not used”… ;) ;)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAC-46_(handgun)

The point is moot anyway because ballistic forensics is hokum. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-field-of-fire...

It's kind of fascinating how all the bullshit TV copaganda scenes involving forensics have both been A) rightly decried as unrealistic by savvy viewers, and B) still been fairly realistic depictions of the field of forensics.

The article briefly touches on future packaging. Would ice ever be useful in packaging frozen foods? It'd be biodegradable, and would be a sign of trust that the goods have been permanently frozen from packaging to delivery.

You'd literally be able to just throw the trash outside and let it feed your garden, lol.

The integrity check could also make this especially valuable for transporting medication that must remain cold. The current state of the art isn't much more than putting ice packs in a styrofoam cooler.

The BioPykrete name is kinda funny. As opposed to the regular pykrete, made with the famously not-bio wood pulp

Well, this beeing war times- this might went really fast from "cool" to - "used in the ukraine war as insitu pontoon drones.

Its really cool though.. all it needs is fuel, a fridge system and some additions- and freeze some water floaties, then pump air inside.

On this topic, I'm sure they were testing a pykrete aircraft carrierº during WW2. I dont think it was every fully realised though.

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

Well a carrier is full of equipment. A submarine freezer drone, building a ponton in the middle of a river is just a self achoring box to drive tanks over.

Sounds like a good candidate for shielding an inter-galactic colony ship.

Inter-galactic? My dude I think you missed a few steps

The farther you go, the faster you need to go to get enough time dilation to make the trip worthwhile. The faster you go, the more the shielding matters. It still applies!

> The faster you go, the more the shielding matters.

Unless of course you just bend everything around your private bubble with your warp drive.

I feel like the obvious answer here for use is at the skating rink.

It's not necessarily a bonus, different sports need completely different ice properties (e.g. figure skating vs hockey), and a managed arena needs ease of maintenance.

I spend an enormous amount of time at the rink (18 ice times in the last 9 days). Can you explain this? Because I don't see the difference between the ice for figure skating vs hockey, both of which happen daily at our local rink.

Hockey needs colder/tougher ice, for figure skating it ideally needs to be a whole degree C warmer to get better blade penetration. Yes you can balance it and public rinks will keep it constant throughout a day, however for dedicated events it's adjusted (at least it is in our rink).

You need the surface of the ice rink to melt though in order to "skate".

You're going to have to explain this we well. I've skated perfectly fine at -40, and there was no melting going on.

When there's melting going on at the rink, we're not allowed on the ice.

The melting is just at the interface between the skate and the ice. (It re-freezes after.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_skating#Physical_mechanics...

I don't see how this stronger ice would operate any different than regular ice.

I hate how researchers always have to pretend there's a practical application for their inventions. This is clearly never going to replace concrete in any situation. But it's still interesting.

I think all researchers should be forced to consider the practical applications of their work, if they are publicly funded. Don't want to answer those questions, go find your own money.

Finally! Ice-9!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine

The Wikipedia article mentions how this happened with an anti-AIDS medication called ritonavir. I watched this video by Veritasium on that situation a while back; I recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksn5yrsC3Wg

Another instance of 'Super Ice' or as named in the article 'Pykrete' in science fiction is in Neal Stephenson's Novel from 2015: Seveneves.

The substance is used in space for the construction of temporary habitats. I suppose this is plausible if you manage to find a large source of ice and bring it into a stable orbit. It won't melt into liquid, and perhaps the reinforcing fibers could help prevent sublimation.

A lot of the novel strained my ability to suspend disbelief, but the overall scope and ambition is so awesome I was able to forgive the poor editing. It's attempting to be hard sci-fi, much of the novel is taken up by technical descriptions that could only appeal to an engineer-minded person.

> A lot of the novel strained my ability to suspend disbelief, but the overall scope and ambition is so awesome

While the 2nd half of the book is definitely still sci-fi territory, the first part is slowly getting into the plausible tech realm, 12 years after the book was written. We now have a much stronger space industry, and probably could match or exceed the payload to orbit in 2 years from the book (if everyone would work towards the same goal, which is still a bit of fantasy but hey...)

Side note, but I have a hard time thinking of Seveneves in halves; isn't it 3 distinct parts?

Mainly I remember skimming the middle third because it felt like such a drag.

Heh, true. My brain went into "pre space" and "post space" as halves :)

You could cleanly think about it in three parts, but the time jump in the middle which involves a whole new set of characters is another way to split it.

Yes the book itself is broken into 3 parts but if you're looking at it from a scientific plausibility scale parts 1 & 2 are in the same vicinity of that scale where part 3 jumps a good ways into more traditional scifi levels of plausibility.

> getting into the plausible tech realm

Except bringing an asteroid all the way down to the ISS. That part was uncharacteristically thoughtless, I think.

It basically enabled the plot and mostly happened 'off camera'. The parts about the management of radiation was pretty cool though. Because if it I earmarked "Ichi-F: A Worker's Graphic Memoir of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant" to read later on.

pykrete isnt a scifi material. its a ww2 idea the brits had for making an ice based aircraft carrier

I saw the title and thought "pykrete". Here's the aircraft carrier in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

I'm still salty over the Kickstarter he ran about a sword fighting video game that was, at the time, the highest valued project in Kickstarter history, and he just... gave up and released nothing.

I literally picked up Cat's Cradle for first time in decades this weekend. Funny how these things line up.

Ice nine!

What is Ice 362880?

(I’m sorry.)

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