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Title: A Cracked Piece of Metal Self-Healed In Experiment That Stunned
Scientists

Link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/21/0...

alternative_right writes: We certainly weren't looking for it. What we have
confirmed is that metals have their own intrinsic, natural ability to heal
themselves, at least in the case of fatigue damage at the nanoscale.' While
the observation is unprecedented, it's not wholly unexpected. In 2013, Texas
A&M University materials scientist Michael Demkowicz worked on a study
predicting that this kind of nanocrack healing could happen, driven by the
tiny crystalline grains inside metals essentially shifting their boundaries
in response to stress... That the automatic mending process happened at room
temperature is another promising aspect of the research. Metal usually
requires lots of heat to shift its form, but the experiment was carried out
in a vacuum; it remains to be seen whether the same process will happen in
conventional metals in a typical environment. A possible explanation involves
a process known as cold welding, which occurs under ambient temperatures
whenever metal surfaces come close enough together for their respective atoms
to tangle together. Typically, thin layers of air or contaminants interfere
with the process; in environments like the vacuum of space, pure metals can
be forced close enough together to literally stick.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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