I don’t know if this will actually pan out the way that they imply in the title; armor needs to have a lot of different characteristics in order to be practical. As in, resistance to heat and cold, resistance to acids, alkalines, petroleum distillates, salts, UV, and oxygen, and also resist deformation. Multiple materials have displays significant promise for armor, but had a very short lifespan in real-word conditions. For instance, there was a material trademarked as Zylon that was supposed to be better than Kevlar, and it was used extensively by Second Chance (a body armor company); several cops were killed when their armor failed, and the armor failed because of exposure to sweat and ambient heat.
Yeah, this is a super cool development, but remember that everything that comes out at this stage is hype.
The armor works perfectly fine as long as it’s not exposed to oxygen. But when’s that ever going to happen?
That by itself isn’t terrible, that could still be used if it is sealed in something like an era brick if it’s good enough.
Layer it with Kevlar and good?
It really depends on whether it can be made to meet all the other criteria required for armor. I think that it’s too early to make any good predictions.
Yes… that’s why they use the word “could”. This is how research works and what reasonable science reporting looks like. There were no promises or wild claims made in the article.
…and uses it to oppress and/or disenfranchise poor people
You mispronounced promote American interests.
America bad
Indeed
I can’t wait to find out how toxic this is.
Good news, it’s completely non toxic.
Bad news, it costs 2 million dollars per square foot.
The pentagon will now take your whole paycheck.
Thank you for your support, patriot.
Good news, it costs 2 million dollars per square foot, so they won’t militarise the police further with it.
There is an old Russian joke.
Son asks his father, “Daddy, I’ve heard the price of vodka went up, does it mean you will be drinking less?”, and the father answers “No, son, you will be eating less”.Well not immediately… Years from now when the military develops something even better then this will all become surplus and sold off to SWAT teams etc. for next to nothing.
The article says the process is scalable.
They will make it into a mandatory dress uniform for school children.
With these bonds so dense, I want to imagine that it would actually be quite non-toxic as these is little to react with.
Then again, I’m not a bio chemist
Right, and wouldn’t the rings be pretty fragile considering how long they are? So it would probably have similar bioactivity as like olive oil.
I’m sure this is real, but I see a headline like that and I think of schoolyard talk. Like, nuh uh, my armour has 100 trillion bonds, you can’t shoot me.
They must have hired some former Nvidia marketing guys.
Anyone know the cost per kilogram?
Edit: Apparently $20,000/kg
…for now
This is still basic research, it’s not close to commercialization.
I skimmed the article, scrolled down but people hasn’t mentioned its mechanically Chain mail in atomic scale yet? Did I read it wrong?
It is
i could make stronger
I did your mom stronger
Me when the only thing I eat all day is weed and cheese.
hello I would like to order a thousand full plate mails
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Why don’t they just use diamond, the hardest metal?
I thought Dragonforce was the hardest metal known to man?
Lol, this
Hardness isn’t the best thing to have in armor. In fact, extreme hardness means extreme brittleness.
Tensile strength is more desirable in armor. That’s the sort of strength that a string or rope, or Kevlar will have.
Those can stretch a bit before breaking.
Kevlar will stretch a bit when catching a bullet, this does a few things, but importantly it slows the bullet before stopping it.
So this new material will likely show extreme tensile strength rather than hardness.
Correct. 🙂 Reminds me of when I wanted new tires & I was complaining about how some tires were rated for a criminally short life. I wondered which ones lasted the longest.
The mechanic then remarked that sure, they can make tires that last a hell of a long time & never puncture. But the ride would be so terrible because the tires would be tough, stiff, would work your suspension harder, and it would cost a fortune to boot. It’s not worth it. There are multiple material, usage considerations when making a product. Really makes you appreciate the experts in their various fields.
Not to mention, really hard tires would have very poor grip. The rubber needs to be a bit softer to squish around all of the little imperfections in the road, technically increasing the contact area and providing a little lateral bracing (probably not the right term so I hope I’m making sense). This is why a lot of performance tires have shorter lifespans then other tire types, because in addition to a different tread pattern, they also often use a softer, “stickier” rubber, which wears out faster.
I’ll be eager to know what the results will be about it’s resistance to bullets and sharpened objects.
Currently, garbage. They used it to reinforce a polymer to go from a strength of 50 MPa to 70 MPa. Kevlar is 10x stronger, commercially scaled, and cheap
Surely I can’t be the only one who thought this were interleaved DNA chains
Anecdotal evidence would seem to suggest that DNA is not a particularly effective armor.
100 trillion barry bonds
At least it’s not 100 trillion James Bonds.
Not if Hank Scorpio has anything to say about it.
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