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  • Hacker News
  • it took so long to find because it's been hiding
    by NopIdoN
  • So to make this I just mix up the metals and wait for Mango Mussolini to press the button?
    by felooboolooomba
  • Not the most economical manufacturing process, it has to be said.
    by HPsquared
  • 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)

    by indrora
  • Well it appears to be the cheapest method known to produce at least some metal alloys.
    by perpetuallunch
  • It might be a bit tough getting the permits from the EPA.
    by forinti
  • It's more of an exploration technique.

    Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening which is also based on randomness.

    by amelius
  • 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.
    by sawjet
  • You can probably skip the town in the ingredient list.
    by tuetuopay
  • 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.
    by boothby
  • This alloy is naturally the macguffin in a Godzilla and/or Sentai film.
    by WorldMaker
  • '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.
    by anigbrowl
  • Oklo, Gabon appears to have run a nuclear reactor about 1.7 billion years ago, though whether you can get a natural nuclear explosion on some chunk of rock somewhere might be difficult to tell.
    by tolciho
  • It is a previously not-made mix of metals. But nothing in the paper explains why it is interesting. Sure we have not seen alloys with that exact combination, but nor have we seen that one with 2% more Si and 3% less Mo. It lacks a "why do we care?" section. Nor are documented any interesting properties of the same other than existing. What did i miss?
    by dmitrygr
  • Somehow it reminds me of FMA's take on Philosopher's Stone https://fma.fandom.com/wiki/Philosopher%27s_Stone
    by voidnothings
  • 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.

    by tastyfreeze
  • 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.
    by dotfrag
  • 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.
    by tokai
  • What, you mean, like American Machine and Foundry building nuclear reactors?

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

    by GolfPopper
  • Explosion welding is a real thing that’s a tiny bit like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosion_welding
    by sunshinesnacks
  • 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.
    by MeteorMarc
  • > hiroshimaite

    Today I learned an interesting new word, which is led me to its analogues:

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

    by EdwardDiego
  • Related: "Strange crystals found inside wreckage from the first nuclear bomb test" may 2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48155450 87 comments
    by HelloUsername
  • The "AlAu4" structure comment got me reading about the aluminum-gold phase diagram. One component there, AlAu2, was infamous in the early IC industry for causing chip failures ("purple plague").

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold%E2%80%93aluminium_interme...

    by pfdietz