Remember the classic 1991 movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day? Well even if you do not, surely you are familiar with the scene where Arnold blasts Agent John Doggett aka T-1000 with his giant shotgun and opens up gaping holes in the cyborg’s body. As only future metals can, T-1000’s body quickly repaired the holes with some futuristic technology that surely could never be real, right? 2015 continues to bring us surprises in terms of new technologies and discoveries and the possibility of repairing metals is now real.
A group of scientists much smarter than myself developed a new material called tributylborane (in saving me some much-needed effort in not having to try and correctly spell the word throughout this article, I will call it T). T is designed to sit between two polymer layers, so think about a giant sandwich when trying to imagine the structure. When an outside object such as a bullet penetrates the exterior wall of the sandwich, T uses the available oxygen around the space and quickly fills in and hardens, creating a seal. The seal is not designed to be permanent but it is strong enough to give someone time to come in and replace the damage.
Even thought T has been initially designed with the mindset of repairing damage on spacecrafts, T can also have a future in commercial airlines and military equipment. The team behind the new material posted a really short demonstration about T on Youtube. Please follow the link below to get an idea as to how this substance would work.
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Thanks to geek.com for the story.
