Isn't cold welding essentially that?
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
90 points (88.8% liked)
Technology
60009 readers
3479 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The issue is that, from my understanding, it needs to be in a low/no oxygen environment to prevent the oxidized layer that forms and blocks the metal from fusing. I've heard from interviews with astronauts that they can re-fuse chunks of metal in space by just pushing them back together.
"Autonomous healing of fatigue cracks via cold welding"
That's the literal name of the paper. I'm quite over this story getting pumped around the internet. This is not news. This is not novel.
Also, this particular source leaving out the fact that the experiment was performed under vacuum is especially deceitful.
Yeah and preventing that from happening in space is rather complex task. Especially on parts that grind against each other causing the existing oxidized layer to wear off.
Surprised in an article about self healing metal, they didn't mention cold fusion which has been known about for decades.
If this is the same physical phenomenon or a different one, it is incredibly fascinating and it's importance, if it can be controlled, is massive.
Not far-fetched at all. Metal has memory. Which is how body shops warp metal back to normal on body work after a collision, as long as it's not too far gone.
There's different kind of "memories" when talking about metals but this is probably not related to that. What I suspect happened is cold fusion in a very clean environment without oxygen (or very low oxygen) where oxidation doesn't happen, allowing the very very small fractures to reattach.