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submitted 2 years ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

Iron Man-inspired material made from DNA and glass is 5x stronger than steel — and 4x lighter::Regular glass is brittle and fragile. But pure glass coated on DNA is a different beast entirely.

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[-] qooqie@lemmy.world 112 points 2 years ago

I always hear about these new amazing materials. While they’re great concepts they’re usually held back by how crazy expensive they are to produce. I’m betting this falls into that bin

[-] DingoBilly@lemmy.world 36 points 2 years ago

Yep. As soon as you read the title you know it's useless.

Either too expensive, or it only works at a microscopic level but doesn't scale, or just doesn't actually work.

It's like all the cancer cures you hear about that unfortunstely mostly don't pan out. Just clickbait headlines.

[-] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

One thing to always have in mind is that the poor researchers making these discoveries are victims too. They spend months, if not years researching and when they publish their research some random tech website make a clickbait article about it, usually by taking a few sentences out of context and using hyperbole.

[-] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 years ago

A lot of cancer stuff isn’t actually a cure, and if it is it’s only for a specific type of cancer and the success rate is never a headline item.

So you read a headline that says “cure of cancer” which is conveniently leaving out “for specific cancer abc in these specific circumstances with a success rate of 58%”

There’s never really been a true “cure for all cancer 100% success rate” found, and anyone who claims otherwise is misunderstanding the science being discussed.

[-] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

not to mention many such "cures" that make it to the headlines are still the animal trial phase...

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 35 points 2 years ago

Aluminum was used as the cap to the Washington monument because it was worth so much...

Takes a while to make stuff cheap

[-] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 years ago

It could also be that the material is just not all that special. "Stronger than steel" is a very easy goal to achieve. Lighter is easy too. Now pair those two with higher fracture toughness, and you have something worth talking about.

[-] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago

"Stronger than steel"

Recovering machinist here, and I agree. The other thing that annoys me about "StRoNgEr ThAn StEeL" is that there is a wide variety of different types of steel, all with different strength charachteristics. Some types of steel are 5x stronger than other types of steel.

Same thing for Ford's "Military grade" aluminum. The truck bodies are made out of 5052 and 6061 depending on how it's shaped. Those are literally the most common grades of aluminum. And that's what you'd make a truck body out of, but its funny.

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 years ago

Also, industrial grade, surgical grade, space grade or whatever grade stuff is just funny marketing BS to me. You could probably come up with fancy terms for selling something as mundane as pencils. Instead of calling the materials wood and graphite, these marketing monkeys would probably use some fancy super high tech words instead.

[-] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

These advanced pencils are designed by A.I. and use biological carbon foam encasing stacked layers of graphene!

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 years ago

How about throwing in some ”organic lignin composite nanomaterial” to jazz up the sales pitch. Just imagine the 300 million years of continuous development to form this fine material with extraordinary tensile properties…

[-] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

"lignin" was the word I couldn't think of, thanks! I probably should have tried to crowbar "blockchain" in there somewhere.

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Oh, totally forgot about blockchains. I wonder if there’s a way to include blockchains, NFTs and cryptocurrencies into a pencil purchase. Maybe each package of pencils could come with an NFT corresponding with the physical objects or something like that. Remember that time when people wanted to buy NFTs corresponding to a part of the world map. Well, why would you want to own the NFT of France when you can own the NFT of this pencil. :D

[-] overload@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 years ago

The only one I have personal experience with that's real would be "analytical grade" with respect to chemicals. And probably Food grade. Those actually mean something.

[-] paysrenttobirds@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 years ago

The real success here seems to be creating a super nano configurable lattice out of DNA that can then be coated with other things to make a composite reinforced material like super fine reinforced cement. The article I've read only mention the 5 times compressive strength for glass, but their next try will be carbon fiber, which has comparable fracture toughness to steel even without this lattice design.

I guess I don't understand all the negativity in this thread, like everything was new once and just because every breakthrough doesn't make it to Walmart by Christmas doesn't mean it's not exciting.

[-] CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 18 points 2 years ago

Yeah articles talking about them usually say something about how "in 10 to 20 years it'll be ready for mass production!" and then you never hear about them again.

[-] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 40 points 2 years ago

"And so we drew Superman instead. Same diff."

[-] mint_tamas@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago

“So midjourney came up with this BS image and we didn’t even care to look at it closely”

[-] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

Technically steel does contain iron, I guess.

[-] HeyLow 17 points 2 years ago

Damn who would have thought semen made a good binder with glass 👀

[-] shasta@lemm.ee 16 points 2 years ago

Finally, a market for my skills

[-] Lophostemon@aussie.zone 12 points 2 years ago

‘Star Wars Inspired Laser Sword’

(Body copy:) Never gonna happen but someone was ‘inspired’ by it.

this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
175 points (100.0% liked)

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