Easy-to-Make Material Scratches Diamond

holy_calamity writes "A material tough enough to scratch diamond that can be made without resorting to massive pressure has been developed at UCLA. A regular furnace and a zap of current is enough to meld boron with the metal rhenium." Sound familiar? This is the other new material tougher than diamond, but no word yet on how they rate against each other.

Price

[Anonymous Coward]

Rhenium is very expensive. Pure boron isn't cheap either. This stuff could end up costing as much as diamond.

Re:Obligatory...

[CrimsonAvenger]

If the bullet has enough (a) is does not need any (b,) because nothing lasts very long against lots of (a) moving really fast. (I need me some (a.))

No matter how much (a) it has, if it is hard enough, it will strip the rifling grooves right out of the barrel, and won't hit worth crap. A bullet isn't supposed to be hard. Unless we're talking about the Penetrator of a Discarding Sabot round.

Re:Obligatory...

[merikari]

One shot, one kill, is always the infantryman's goal. The best possible way to remove an enemy soldier from the fight is to kill him; wounded enemies often can and do keep shooting back. The "wounding is better than killing" meme is often repeated among soldiers as well as civilians, but it does not appear anywhere in Army doctrine.

I have a military training (Finnish Defence Forces, conscript not professional). Though I'm not sure if it's an official doctrine, wounding an enemy soldier is often a good way to disable more than one enemy fighters. In fact during infantry training we were told that we should aim for the belly. This will, in most cases, disable the enemy and tie a larger number of support personnel and strain the enemy logistics. Only in movies, soldiers continue shooting like madmen after being shot in the belly.

I have also a medical corps man training and I know that the enemy will try to strain the medical logistics and other support units in a conflict. Breaking the support chain, of course also by killing, but especially by wounding a lot of soldiers is a fastest way to deplete supply and restrict mobility. In a symmetrical conflict, where both sides have field armies it is a more logical _strategy_ to wound as often as possible as this will strain enemy's resources also behind the front.

I don't know that much about asymmetrical combat (like the one we see in Iraq), I'll leave that to all the wannabe experts out there.

Re:Price

[asuffield]

Rhenium is very expensive. Pure boron isn't cheap either. This stuff could end up costing as much as diamond.

Almost anything useful costs more than diamond. Of the materials used in industry today, diamond falls firmly into the "common and cheap" section. Subject anything with carbon in it to the temperatures and pressures common in geology, and you end up with diamond in it somewhere.

Those prices you see in jewellers? They are on the order of a thousand times larger than the actual value of diamond. Some of that pays for the expertise to cut diamonds into decorative shapes (which isn't easy), most of it is just an insanely huge markup.

We don't have a need for cheaper alternatives to diamond - it would be like searching for a cheaper alternative to sea water. Most likely the whole diamond angle is just a bogus press spin on the story.

Re:Obligatory...

[TheRaven64]

The myth, as you call it, does have some basis in fact. While not good strategy for a direct engagement, most land mine designs are intended to cripple rather than kill. Land mines are often deployed to slow an advancing army. When they detonate, your soldiers are not likely to be nearby, so the fact that a wounded person can still fire a gun is not an issue. The fact that they then need two people to carry the wounded person either with them (in which case you get two tired soldiers when you engage them) or away (in which case you get three fewer soldiers you need to fight) makes it better. Most modern designs also have a short delay after being triggered, so they will detonate in the middle of an advancing group, rather than just getting the first line.

The civilised world [wikipedia.org] (not including the USA) has banned the use of mines of this type, due to the fact that they are very likely to cause large numbers of civilian casualties.