How does this compare to carbon fiber?
That was my first though too.
Also, I understand why they just talk about “strength”, but it would be nice to have some real idea of which properties they really mean. Is it harder? Does it resist impact better? Does it resist lateral torsion better? Steels cover a wide range and almost always involve tradeoffs.
Yeah it’s kind of insane what a miracle material steel is. Especially for how long ago it has been discovered and we still haven’t found another material that is better in every way, like how steel replaced iron or brass or copper. The balance of all the material properties for its weight/volume and its manufacturability and price is just unbeatable.
For scifi purposes,I tried to find another material that could beat it if cost wasn’t an issue and I couldn’t. Closest ones I could find that aren’t already obiquitous in popular consciouness like titanium, aluminium, tungsten carbide etc. are Molybdenum and Beryllium. But yeah, they don’t exactly beat steel either.
Isn’t beryllium pretty brittle, though? Beryllium poisoning happens due to airborne particles, I thought it almost… crumbled? I guess?
That only works in the Lab….
This is actually pretty cool:
The colleagues reported in Cell Reports Physical Science that by building a structure out of DNA and then coating it with glass, they have created a very strong material with very low density.
They use self-assembling DNA to build a lattice, which is then doped with microscopic glass. It’s kind of like reinforced concrete but at the molecular scale. Scaling it up will be the hard part but the technique is pretty innovative.
One step closer to Mithril
I always find it weird when they say stuff like something is 5 times lighter than something else. Or it’s 10 times cheaper than something else. It seems better to say scientists have invented a new material that weighs 1/5 as much as steel.
