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Discovery of a multicomponent alloy forged by the Hiroshima atomic blast

86 points by _____k 7 days ago | 33 comments

Interesting. Bring on the A-bomb foundries! Had this been discovered during the exploration phase of atomic bomb use we probably would have seen A-bomb foundry proposals.

There is a hypothesized process in this paper that sounds like a graduate thesis on its own.

dotfrag 7 minutes ago

Sounds like an interesting idea and I think there are things like this being done but, couldn't we accomplish the same thing on a smaller scale without all the destruction? What about fusion welding once we get that more locked in? I know it's still a WIP but if we're getting to "millions of degrees", it could speed up the process if we're able to localize the fusion. Also, what about cold fusion? The problem on any of these is the cost -- it may be quicker/better but if the cost is way too high, it's not worth it. Maybe in the future it'll be cheaper/easier.

sunshinesnacks 4 hours ago

Explosion welding is a real thing that’s a tiny bit like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosion_welding

GolfPopper 6 hours ago

What, you mean, like American Machine and Foundry building nuclear reactors?

https://www.ans.org/news/article-1858/elk-river-rural-americ...

tastyfreeze 5 hours ago

No, I mean using atomic bombs to manufacture these alloys at scale. In the 50s a-bombs were proposed for all sorts of workaday uses. Imagine using a small a-bomb for mining just as we use ANFO today.

I am sure that somebody will take up the task of reproducing these alloys using intense heat from a non-atomic source. New alloys can be quite lucrative but developing them requires just as much experimentation as making new drugs. I'd imagine that getting to an alloy of 7 metals through progressive experimentation would take awhile. Now we know it's possible and have a possible production path. That is enough to spur some experiments down that road.

tomatocracy 39 minutes ago

Both the US and the Soviet Union actually experimented with "nuclear fracking" in oil/gas fields. The Soviet Union also used atomic bombs to put out fires in gas fields as late as 1981.

cucumber3732842 53 minutes ago

>Imagine using a small a-bomb for mining just as we use ANFO today.

Nuclear cement kiln

Nuclear pile jetter

Nuclear tunnel boring machine.

fxtentacle 14 minutes ago

Nuclear Toothpaste

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

tokai 5 hours ago

I bet a nuclear foundry can be bundled with atomic mining ala Project Plowshare. Guess we are lucky we didn't get the future the atomic age promised.

WorldMaker 4 hours ago

Using the Project Orion spacecraft to get there, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propu...

anigbrowl 2 hours ago

'natural experiment' doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I don't know enough about chemistry to tell if this alloy has potentially interesting properties, or it's just interesting because it's something we weren't previously aware of as being possible.

beacon294 26 minutes ago

[flagged]

HelloUsername 3 hours ago

Related: "Strange crystals found inside wreckage from the first nuclear bomb test" may 2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48155450 87 comments

HPsquared 6 hours ago

Not the most economical manufacturing process, it has to be said.

boothby 6 hours ago

The paper explains it more as an experimental process than a manufacturing process. Each granule of hiroshimaite captures a "unique" micro-environment. One could imagine an ethical version of this involving conventional explosives in a controlled environment containing a variety of metallic samples of different compositions.

hparadiz 5 hours ago

Metals refining in space or a no atmosphere place like the moon. If an alloy is discovered that has properties we want I can see some future civilization popping nukes like pellets to produce it.

WorldMaker 4 hours ago

Using conventional explosives is a real thing that exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosion_welding

tuetuopay 6 hours ago

You can probably skip the town in the ingredient list.

sawjet 5 hours ago

There were some nuclear fracking experiments where the nukes cost in the range of a few hundred thousand dollars. It's probably cheaper than you think.

BizarroLand 3 hours ago

The real expense is in rebuilding the city every cycle

forinti 3 hours ago

It might be a bit tough getting the permits from the EPA.

BizarroLand 3 hours ago

Call it the Cheeto in Charge Manufacturing Center and you'll get a fastpass

perpetuallunch 4 hours ago

Well it appears to be the cheapest method known to produce at least some metal alloys.

indrora 5 hours ago

It's a real blast, though.

(In all seriousness, I hope we never, ever in this lifetime cause humans to suffer like we did on that day)

wredcoll 5 hours ago

I mean, I'm probably just being contrarian and I too would appreciate it if people stopped suffering, but like, people are suffering worse than that right now as we type this.

perpetuallunch 4 hours ago

Sure.

70,000 dying in a flash certainly puts an end to their suffering.

wbl 3 hours ago

They did not get vaporized in the fireball. We have survivors at the hypocenter. Intense burns and radiation poisoning killed most plus conventional blast damage mechanisms. Half the acute deaths happened after the first day.

MeteorMarc 5 hours ago

This is really worth a read. Although the origin is an airblast, ground structures and soil is evaporated too into an inhomogeneous plasma. The relative fast cooling adds to the crystal formation.

WorldMaker 4 hours ago

This alloy is naturally the macguffin in a Godzilla and/or Sentai film.

catlover76 5 hours ago

[dead]

metalman 6 hours ago

Hey! ,this is great! next we can have moskitonium, londinium(heh), and washingtondcinite, rare valuable collectables for some far future alien travellers

DiggyJohnson 2 hours ago

why would you wish for this?

wartywhoa23 57 minutes ago

He's not wishing, he's warning sarсastically that discussing materials that happen to be byproducts of a mass human sacrifice without any regard to what it in fact was can have future repercussions.

samatman 2 hours ago

It's in the user name: he's metalman.

He collects metals. Made of men.

wartywhoa23 2 hours ago

Did they disclose the amount of human souls in that alloy?