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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

'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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

You can probably skip the town in the ingredient list.

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

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.

The real expense is in rebuilding the city every cycle

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

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)

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.

Sure.

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

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.

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

why would you wish for this?

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

He collects metals. Made of men.