Is it possible to identify metal from outer space? Scientists say yes.
A recent article on Livescience.com interviewed several scientists who said metal alloys from space would be relatively easy to identify. The article was prompted by a New York Times piece about the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a program for investigating UFOs funded by the U.S. Department of Defense between 2007 and 2012, that says that metal alloys and other materials recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena are being stored in Las Vegas. The Live Science article also discusses an MSNBC interview with one of the authors of the Times report who indicated that these materials were unidentified.
But chemists and metallurgists who spoke to Live Science said even alien metal can be identified. Here are their comments:
“I don’t think it’s plausible that there’s any alloys that we can’t identify,” Richard Sachleben, a retired chemist and member of the American Chemical Society’s panel of experts, told Live Science.
“There are databases of all known phases [of metal], including alloys,” May Nyman, a professor in the Oregon State University Department of Chemistry, told Live Science. Those databases include straightforward techniques for identifying metal alloys.
If an unknown alloy appeared, Nyman said it would be relatively simple to figure out what it was made of. For crystalline alloys — those in which the mixture of atoms forms an ordered structure — researchers use a technique called X-ray diffraction, Nyman said.
“The X-ray’s wavelength is about the same size as the distance between the atoms [of crystalline alloys],” Nyman said, “so that means when the X-rays go into a well-ordered material, they diffract [change shape and intensity] … and from that diffraction [pattern] you can get information that tells you the distance between the atoms, what the atoms are, and how well-ordered the atoms are. It tells you all about the arrangement of your atoms.”
X-ray diffraction (XRD) is a structural analysis technique used to obtain mineralogical and phase composition depending the on the nature of the materials and the relative concentrations of minerals of interest. XRD is commonly used in geology and mining (earth science) laboratories to analyze the phases or compounds in crystalline materials such as rocks, minerals and oxide materials and products.
XRD instruments used for geological sample analysis range from simple, easy to use bench-top systems for routine metals and metallurgical analysis to more advanced floor-standing, high performance, research grade systems for investigative laboratories. Bench-top XRD models use different X-ray power sources and offer different levels of convenience and performance than the floor models because they can be transported between laboratories or into the field and does not require any special infrastructure.
Watch this video to see a demonstration of a desktop XRD instrument.
Recommended reading:
Analysis of geological minerals using the ARL EQUINOX series X-ray diffractometer
Complimentary XRF and XRD for More Complete Analysis of Geological Minerals
XRD Helps Characterize New Minerals
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As a scientist I understand where these people are coming from, the various metallurgists and chemists who were interviewed for the Live Science article. But here is the issue: If the materials, alloys, and metals and other compounds are made from the existing Periodic Table, yes, they can be identified with things such as scanning probe microscopy and x ray radiation and other means. However, perhaps they are true exotics:
Macroscopic quark conglomerates and glueballs/gluon alloys that make use of the Strong Nuclear Force, but, the “aliens” have figured out how to perform quantum chromodynamic engineering…so as to expand the Strong Nuclear Force/gluon field, to encompass the alloy structure. Such a material would be billions to trillions of times stronger, harder, and tougher than the hardest steel alloy or diamond composite. You can say “These subatomic particles are not stable like electrons.”
Unless…the “aliens” have figured out how to alter the very fundamental physical constraints down to the quantum vacuum state. Then they can alter the decay rates of anything, so as to stabilize them.
If they are using atomic precision normal atoms, like fullerenes or fullerene titanium alloy, we can identify that.
What if they found a way to make lightweight stable synthetic neutronium or dwarf star metal, in which the atoms are collapsed and compressed and the nucleus is bonded but somehow they can alter the weight and decay rate so it is stable as steel?
I have 2 pieces of topaline 123. You can’t cut through it with anything, you can’t burn through it, it looks like tiny shiny black diamonds all fuzed together. It is super heavy beyond anything else.