'Super Steel' Sought For Fusion Reactors 421
Smivs writes "New research shows how
steel will fail at high temperatures because of the magnetic properties of the metal.
Scientists say an understanding of how the Twin Towers collapsed will help them develop the materials needed to build fusion reactors.
The New York buildings fell when their steel backbones lost strength in the fires that followed the plane impacts.
Dr Sergei Dudarev told the British Association Science Festival that improved steels were now being sought.
The principal scientist at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) said one of the first applications for these better performing metals would be in the wall linings of fusion reactors."
They Should ask Thulsa Doom how to make it strong (Score:4, Interesting)
"Steel isn't strong, boy. Flesh is stronger. Look around you." Thulsa motions to some of the thousands of followers surrounding his mountain who worship him as the mouthpiece of Set. He points up to the top of a cliff, "There, on the rocks, that beautiful girl." He motions to the girl, "Come to me, my child." The girl steps off the cliff and falls to her death. "That is strength, boy. That is power: the strength and power of flesh. What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength of your body, the desire in your heart. I gave you these...."
Irony if this works. (Score:5, Interesting)
If it worked and we can make Fusion Reactors. This would leave some irony to the terrorist.
The Terrist may think they won because once we go Fusion we won't need to protect our oil interests thus mostly ignoring that area of the world, except for the occasional humanitarian mission, thus reducing our influcene in their countries...
However because we are not funding those countries with money they end up bankrupt in far more trouble then with the US involved.
When the Terrorist actually win they loose, because their goals will lead to their destruction.
Re:shameless (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree. I think it would be the most wonderful irony if a crucial piece of the technology required to provide humanity with a cheap source of energy came from their attacks. The only reason the theocracies in the middle east have any power is that they have a natural resource that the rest of the world needs. With commercial fusion, this evaporates (you can make oil for plastics from air and water if you have enough cheap energy).
Or would you rather that their deaths only benefited Al-Quaeda?
It's Certainly a Strange Coping Mechanism (Score:5, Interesting)
Would the fact that we've learned something new about steel thanks to the way the Twin Towers fell, silence the conspiracy lovers?
No, of course not. What the hell was I thinking there?
Well, we're getting WAY off topic from the original story here but people deal with loss differently. Some Americans have a near psychotic desire to be a part of bringing justice to those responsible. 9/11 affected us all in different ways. From losing loved ones to losing a sense of security to losing our rights, everyone believes they've lost something.
I listened to a This American Life episode where a man whose mother was raped and killed spent a large part of his life going over what had happened. He even went so far as to go to the jail and interview one of the murderers. He was so convinced there was more to it than just a random robbery gone wrong.
The "Truthers" (as they call themselves) are trying to cope with this in a unique way where they will relentlessly seek the truth--to a fault. They won't ever be satisfied because the attacks were so inconceivable that there must be an equally outrageous explanation for them. Occam's Razor is not in their reasoning kit anymore.
Personally, I think we just need to let them have their community and leave them alone and give them the information they need. You can't change the way these people think and as Americans they have this right to believe what they want--so long as they don't go infringing on other people's life, liberty & pursuit of happiness.
Following World War II, the public's imagination has gone wild from JFK's assassination to 9/11. It's simply something that can no longer be avoided.
Good LUCK! (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not as if high strength hasn't always been sought after in steels (iron-carbon alloy). INcluding high temperature strength. The usual solution is various nickel alloys starting with the austenitic stainless steels and going up from there (HK-40, HP modified).
Yes, we may yet find some interesting corners on phase diagrams, especially via combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput experiementation. But please do not pretent this search is anything remotely novel.
For many high temperature applications, the usual solution is cold wall designs with refractory (insulating alumina) linings keeping the load bearing steels cool. With or without a (thermal expansion problematic) liner (usually austenitic SS) as a membrane seal.
Bullshit story with a bullshit argument (Score:2, Interesting)
We didn't learn anything new. Whatever story you choose to believe, the only facts are that two planes flew into two of the strongest buildings on the planet, and then they crumbled like a house of cards. Structural failure, insider job, whatever; the only thing that could have provided any answers was scooped up and shipped off to China.
With all the evidence gone, all the rest is at best theories. And theories won't help you build any reactors.
I'm confused. Would steel even work? (Score:3, Interesting)
Aren't the magnetic fields in a Tokamak pretty intense? As in, you wouldn't want something ferromagnetic inside?
I thought the leading candidate was vanadium, for its low neutron capture cross section and quickly decaying activation products.
Re:It's Certainly a Strange Coping Mechanism (Score:1, Interesting)
The Idiocy Behind the '9/11 Truth' Movement
By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Posted on September 26, 2006, Printed on September 11, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/42181/ [alternet.org]
A few weeks ago I wrote a column on the anniversary of 9/11 that offhandedly dismissed 9/11 conspiracy theorists as "clinically insane." I expected a little bit of heat in response, but nothing could have prepared me for the deluge of fuck-you mail that I actually got. Apparently every third person in the United States thinks George Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks.
" You're just another MSM-whore left gatekeeper paid off by corporate America," said one writer. "What you do isn't journalism at all, you dick," said another. "You're the one who's clinically insane," barked a third, before educating me on the supposed anomalies of physics involved with the collapse of WTC-7.
I have two basic gripes with the 9/11 Truth movement. The first is that it gives supporters of Bush an excuse to dismiss critics of this administration. I have no doubt that every time one of those Loose Change dickwads opens his mouth, a Republican somewhere picks up five votes. In fact, if there were any conspiracy here, I'd be far more inclined to believe that this whole movement was cooked up by Karl Rove as a kind of mass cyber-provocation, along the lines of Gordon Liddy hiring hippie peace protesters to piss in the lobbies of hotels where campaign reporters were staying.
Secondly, it's bad enough that people in this country think Tim Lahaye is a prophet and Sean Hannity is an objective newsman. But if large numbers of people in this country can swallow 9/11 conspiracy theory without puking, all hope is lost. Our best hope is that the Japanese take pity on us and allow us to serve as industrial slaves in their future empire, farming sushi rice and assembling robot toys.
I don't have the space here to address every single reason why 9/11 conspiracy theory is so shamefully stupid, so I'll have to be content with just one point: 9/11 Truth is the lowest form of conspiracy theory, because it doesn't offer an affirmative theory of the crime.
Forget for a minute all those internet tales about inexplicable skyscraper fires, strange holes in the ground at Shanksville, and mysterious flight manifestoes. What is the theory of the crime, according to the 9/11 Truth movement?
Strikingly, there is no obvious answer to that question, since for all the many articles about "Able Danger" and the witnesses who heard explosions at Ground Zero, there is not -- at least not that I could find -- a single document anywhere that lays out a single, concrete theory of what happened, who ordered what and when they ordered it, and why. There obviously is such a theory, but it has to be pieced together by implication, by paying attention to the various assertions of 9/11 lore (the towers were mined, the Pentagon was really hit by a cruise missile, etc.) and then assembling them later on into one single story. But the funny thing is, when you put together all of those disparate theories, you get the dumbest story since Roman Polanski's Pirates.
The specifics vary, but the basic gist of what They Say Happened goes something like this:
A group of power-hungry neocons, led by Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Bush and others and organizationally represented by groups like the Project for a New American Century, seeks to bring about a "Pearl-Harbor-like event" that would accelerate a rightist revolution, laying the political foundation for invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Your basic Reichstag fire scenario, logical enough so far. Except in this story, the Reichstag fire is an immensely complicated media hoax; the conspirators plot to topple the World Trade Center and pin a series of hijackings on a group of Sunni extremists with alleged ties to al-Qaeda. How do they topple the Trade Center? Well, they make use of NORAD's expertise in flying remote-control aircraft and actually fly two such re
Re:If it doesn't work... (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall that the church where I grew up used huge laminate wooden beams to support the roof. We asked our pastor why they'd used wooden beams instead of steel beams. He responded that the laminate wood beams were actually stronger than steel in a fire, because the steel would weaken (not melt) in the heat and wouldn't support the roof for long. Laminate beams, OTOH, had been shown to hold their strength for hours in a fire - taking up to 24 hours to burn all the way through. (And of course, the wood beams look a lot nicer than steel.)
You've been out-engineered by a Lutheran pastor from the 70's.
Re:shameless (Score:4, Interesting)
No it didn't. Oh, the land existed, and the House of Saud existed, but the entity we call Saudi Arabia exists solely because of the oil under their feet
Saudi Arabia gained it's modern borders in 1932. Oil wasn't discovered until 1939. It wasn't actively exploited until the late 40s due to WW2. You can argue that oil helps prop them up but the idea that we created these theocracies to get that oil strains creditability when they existed prior to the discovery of that oil.
Furthermore, blaming the United States as the GP did doesn't tell the whole story either. The United States didn't draw the lines on the map in the Middle East. The French, British and Turks did. The United States didn't conspire with Israel to seize the Siez Canal -- the French and British did. The United States never invaded Iran -- but the Russians and British have.
Our hands aren't clean by any means but this knee-jerk anti-Americanism that places all of the blame at our feet doesn't even survive a casual reading of history.
Re:Steel not the only material out there... (Score:2, Interesting)
Iron should ultimately become the most abundant element in the universe. This is because energy can be extracted from the fusion of everything lighter than iron and from the fission of anything heavier than iron.
Unfortunately, this may take an inconveniently long time.