back to article Discovery time for 200m WONDER MATERIALS shaved from 4 MILLENNIA... to 4 years

Yale University boffins have devised a new way of identifying super strong metallic glass alloys that will "drastically" increase the discovery rate of the "potentially revolutionary" materials. Scientists are currently rushing to classify various complex alloys known as bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) from a a "vast …

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  1. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

    Apple off my eyes

    I hope they are patenting all these creations before Steve J...oh-errrr

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Am I missing something?

    So they've sped up the process by doing 3000 tests in parallel, and by using very small samples?

    Ooh, revolutionary thinking there!

    1. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

      Re: Am I missing something?

      Yes, you are.

      While I was having a crap yesterday, I had an idea about using nanotubes to make a new class of super-light, super-dense batteries. I must check to see if I'm a millionaire by now.

      This may come as a surprise, so sit down: The mental and physical effort required to conceive an idea isn't even a tiny fraction of the effort needed to bring it to reality.

  3. Tim Worstal

    Amazingly

    One known metal glass combination, a scandium/yttrium one, would make, in theory at least, the world's finest golf driver.

    Materials cost, before manufacturing, would be around $1,000 for it though.

    yours,

    El Reg's friendly neighbourhood rare earths spiv.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Amazingly

      Curious what would make it a finer material for a driver than Titanium? Given that the USGA and R&A limit both the coefficient of restitution of the driver face, as well as the overall volume of the head, it doesn't seem as though there's any room for more advanced materials to improve over the current state of the art.

    2. Graham Marsden
      Facepalm

      Re: Amazingly

      > make, in theory at least, the world's finest golf driver.

      Which still won't stop you slicing it into the rough...

  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    IT Angle

    I'm used to abstracts actually *telling* me what the reports about.

    The core problem is not that bad. for a 3 element alloy (94 elements)^3

    But now multiply the percentages to give (94 * 100)^3

    Is is a physical strategy?

    Is it a clever hack on the quantum mechanical calculation algorithm?

    Who knows.

    And BTW yes I think you could find some Merkins who'd pay $1000/club.partly because a) they really want to play good golf and b) Because they can.

    Of course if that discovery process was skewed to start with the cheaper elements.....

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Re: I'm used to abstracts actually *telling* me what the reports about.

      I can't believe they will go manually through every possible combination.

      With normal alloys you usually step through enough points to identify the key transitions and then draw a phase diagram by interpolation. You can then roughly predict properties of specific alloys by placing them on the diagram.

      For metallic glass they use additional analytics to predict Glass Forming Range, which presumably can then be tested with a few additional data points...

  5. James Hughes 1

    So, on the horizon

    Transparent Aluminium?

    (Can't believe no-one has already mentioned it)

    1. Rattus Rattus

      Re: So, on the horizon

      We already have transparent aluminium. It is also known as artificial sapphire. It is just a particular crystal arrangement of aluminium oxide.

    2. MJI Silver badge

      Re: So, on the horizon

      All you have done is beaten us to it

  6. Mystic Megabyte
    Paris Hilton

    Remember to wear knickers

    So is my flying car is going to be made of glass?

    1. FartingHippo
      Go

      Re: Remember to wear knickers

      That would make the VIP arrivals at the Oscars a must-see. Mmm, Mila Kunis. [Judy Dench, not so much]

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And here was me thinking...

    they were going to test new materials through computer modelling/simulation first.

    Is that not possible in the 21st Century?

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon

      Re: And here was me thinking...

      You can only model what you know.

      What if one of these combinations does something 'odd' that you weren't expecting and couldn't reasonably have predicted?

      Cup of tea anyone?

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: And here was me thinking...

        "What if one of these combinations does something 'odd' that you weren't expecting and couldn't reasonably have predicted?"

        "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov

  8. Rol

    I was under the impression materials science had stepped out of the foundry and into computer modelling. In the way Dmitri Mendeleev managed to accurately predict the properties of yet to be discovered elements way back in 1875, I would have thought our ability to combine elements and molecules in a computer model and assess their qualities would be here by now. Obviously I am wrong, but what on Earth have these muppets been up to for the last century, if they haven't come to some defining conclusion about how matter interferes with each other and coded that into a ZX Spectrum.

    Massively impressed by their engineering skills, but come on, let's get all 21st century on this one.

    I throw down my gauntlet and challenge the scientific community to get their act together and come up with a program that allows me to enter a list of properties that I desire in a material and it churns out a list of credible molecular combinations that meet that specification. I guess this will need the power of quantum computing, but for Christ's sake get a move on will you, the Earth is being consumed to make substandard inefficient crap and we desperately need an intelligent way forward.

    I'll buy the winner a beer.

    P.S. After I buy AC one for beating me to it. I shouldn't have had a coffee break.

  9. Robert Carnegie Silver badge
    Joke

    "Metallic glass" bones eh?

    I just had a hip replacement. It's lead crystal. Bugger.

    PS: This is just a joke.

  10. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    IT Angle

    Looking at some of the diagrams it looks like

    They make up graded alloy strips where one or more of the elements varies along the length.

    The strip is then laid on top of what looks like a plate with holes in it. At this point I'd guess they put the whole lot in a furnace and connect it to a high pressure supply.

    They then try to blow bubbles with the metal.

    Biggest bubble seems to win.

    BTW I suspect the problem with quantum chemical tests is 1 simulation will take hours and the effect is (I suspect) non linear, so extrapolation does not work.

  11. hamcheeseandonion
    Joke

    Order!!...Order I say!!

    "combinatorial sputtering"??

    Listen to PMs Question Time, which this phrase decribes perfectly.

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