Starlite (the substance that "can withstand 75 nuclear blasts")

[AlexH]

Fascinating. Demonstrated on Tomorrow's World in 1990, with rumours since that it was banned due to it being so powerful. Who will be using this in a sci-fi story (or have you already)? I have one it'll suit, where critiquers commented a particular aspect wasn't believable. Starlite would fix that.

A six video series:

The substance that 'can withstand 75 nuclear blasts' - BBC Reel

The curious tale of a ladies hairdresser who invented a potentially world-changing material. Part one of six. Reported by Lee Johnson, produced, filmed and directed by Adam Proctor. Originally published in September 2018.

www.bbc.com

More info:

What happened to `starlite', a material with seemingly miraculous heat-resisting properties invented by a former hairdresser and made from the chemicals and potions he had at work? Did the inventor persuade anyone to back him? | Notes and Queries |

www.theguardian.com

The power of cool: Whatever became of Starlite?

Two decades ago, Maurice Ward invented a fireproof substance that outperformed all known materials. Why wouldn't he reveal its secret, asks Richard Fisher

www.newscientist.com

Starlite - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[AlexH]

10 mindblowing uses for the world-changing substance that never was

Starlite has baffled scientific minds for 23 years

www.techradar.com

 

[.matthew.]

Dead interesting and a shame it never amounted to a commercial product. Even if some comments about it's longevity were suggested, you could lather up a fireman at least

 

[Dave]

I'm highly sceptical of this.

Firstly, there are a lot of vague references to TW and other BBC programmes but no actual links, just short pieces of film which could have been stitched together, with a picture of an egg covered in paste. You don't see the same raw egg being broken that was burned. In fact, all the Wikipedia references are very recent, and they also refer back to vague earlier reports without any references. I used to watch TW regularly. I never saw this item shown.

Secondly, the pasted on material shown in the supposed TV clips is burning and blackening. If the material is reacting to the heat, then there is a chemical reaction taking place. It isn't resisting the heat or displacing the heat elsewhere. The first Law of Thermodynamics, the Conservation of Energy, says that the heat must go somewhere. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Where is this heat going to?

Thirdly, the material is claimed to be a plastic. Plastics are organic polymers of high molecular mass, usually long chains hydrocarbons. They are formed from the elements Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen and burn easily to Soot, Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, and Water. They can often contain other substances, but are not known for resisting fire or heat. On the contrary, they are usually flammable, and dangerous to use as tower block cladding or ceiling tiles. A 'combination of polymers and co-polymers with some additional ceramics' sounds like a hoax.

Fourthly, it is claimed that NASA and Boeing were all interested in the material. These agencies and companies have bottomless pockets as far as finance goes. If they wanted a piece of this then they would have got it. Maurice Ward asked for too much? If this is as good as they say, how much is too much? The only explanation why they didn't would be involvement by governments who wanted it for defence purposes. Besides being a conspiracy theory that even they didn't think up, in the time that has passed, that knowledge would have leaked by now. So, we are lead to believe that Maurice took his secrets to the grave and left no notes. It just doesn't work like that. It was claimed that he developed the material as a result of experiments into synthetic hair fibres. Someone else somewhere would also be carrying out that same research. Why has no one else found it?

Finally, there are some well worn tropes that suggest this is a spoof. The suggestion that it could survive 75 nuclear explosions comes from where exactly? This it put forward without any proof at all. The amateur scientist/ hairdresser who is a loner, and doesn't mix well with people, which goes to explain the lack of information.

 

[.matthew.]

Well for one, I don't think Tomorrow's World was ever called out for faking anything in the 38 years the BBC made it (and there literally is the BBC link to it right there).

The video made it seem like it was deflecting the heat back into the air and while there was blackening and bubbling, it was most likely whatever bonding agents he used to turn whatever it was into a sticky paste rather than the material itself.

"additional ceramics" I'd guess was the primary ingredient there as ceramics are used all over the world for their heat resistant properties.

Further comments made by people who 'apparently' worked with him in trying to develop it said that while the resistance was impressive, it broke down quickly making it impractical for commercial applications (even unused stuff he brought from his workshop was said to have failed over the years).

The vague 75 bomb comment was likely just spin though, implying that its heat resistance would survive the thermal effects of the blast (which was how it was originally painted in some military technology magazine - make tanks safe from nukes type deal).

Now I'm not saying I would be surprised by it being a hoax, but at the same time it did seem to stand up to a modest level of scrutiny and I'll remind you of how many discoveries were made by accident and the seemingly magical abilities present in materials (I'm writing this on silicon and who knows what else).

There are the conspiracy people who claim it was snatched up and black bagged and all that stuff, and while I wouldn't be surprised by that either, the chances are good it was just incapable of becoming a stable product. Who knows

 

[Dave]

Well for one, I don't think Tomorrow's World was ever called out for faking anything in the 38 years the BBC made it (and there literally is the BBC link to it right there).

But it isn't a link to the Tomorrow's World programme. It is a link (which is no longer working anyway) to a different programme which purports to show some clips, something "Reported by Lee Johnson, produced, filmed and directed by Adam Proctor. Originally published in September 2018."

And all the links on the Wikipedia page are retrieved later than 2018 and the New Scientist article is from 2012, still twenty years later. There is nothing from the original time. So it still seemed like an elaborate hoax to me. This YouTube clip is the actual programme, but it kept ending for me following the programme titles.

However, I've now got the clip to work by skipping a few minutes and I accept that it was shown on Tomorrow's World.

As for the resistance to nuclear weapons, the claim was made that it had been "tested in a lab." Do you know of any laboratories where a nuclear weapon has been tested inside? Marketing spin and hyperbole? Certainly not true!

I'll accept that there must be something to the claims. What happened to the square of material that TW had? There must have been more? Where was it manufactured? Who else knew the formula and manufacturing process? Hard to believe that the secret was kept and died with one man.

 

[.matthew.]

The original link in this thread is to the BBC website (the people who would have the archive footage - as long as they didn't tape over it lol) and was made as a lookback video (which the BBC do a lot of to get archive material online).

That YouTube clip literally shows the whole test (both egg and board). It goes on for like 3 minutes after the program titles...

As for the date on it, YouTube wasn't a thing in 1990 and I doubt that many people had the show recorded and thought "I'll put it online," twenty years later.

Tested in a lab could mean anything, as its properties were thermal, the test was probably along the lines of focused heat comparable to a nuclear weapon (also there were quite a few underground tests of nuclear weapons - in bunkers - which I'd say count as inside lol).

Now, normally I'm very sceptical of all this sort of thing, and he could well have created an elaborate hoax, but since it was tested by the BBC at the time, I'm more willing to give it the benefit of the doubt (I wouldn't believe just a random YouTuber claiming it though).

 

[Dave]

Yes, since I was able to find the original programme clip (half way through writing my last post) I'm in total agreement with you now. I appreciate there can't be any references to anything online before the internet was created, but my problem was that the Wikipedia page references show that it was clearly created in 2018, and probably only in response to that BBC Reel clip (and that was what I had the problem with, especially as it didn't appear to show the same egg.) It could still be a hoax, but many of my concerns have certainly evaporated away now, just like the substance itself.

 

[hitmouse]

I remember the TW demo. Pretty sure the was a science doco ?QED on the same subject.

Occasionally wondered over the years what became of it.

 

[AlexH]

Loads of pre-2000s references can be found online e.g. Popular Science magazine, September 1993 (printed copy still available to buy):

Popular Science

Popular Science gives our readers the information and tools to improve their technology and their world. The core belief that Popular Science and our readers share: The future is going to be better, and science and technology are the driving forces that will help make it better.

books.google.co.uk

Britain's Defence Research Agency tested it according to that brief article, as did scientists in the US at the White Sands missile base. Can anyone track down Liz Peace? (edit: I found her already)

And more:

Internet Archive Search: "Maurice Ward" "starlite"

But yep, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a hoax too! It'd have to be a good one to fool Tomorrow's World, I think. But possible. I prefer to think it was real and believe it must have been.

 

[AlexH]

And the "75 nuclear blasts" seems to come from this: "US Atomic Test Centre hit Starlite with blasts of energy equivalent to seventy-five Hiroshimas and only managed to blacken the sample."

 

[Venusian Broon]

Fascinating. Demonstrated on Tomorrow's World in 1990, with rumours since that it was banned due to it being so powerful.

Nope, pretty sure the inventor of it was so paranoid of it being stolen/copied/him not getting his royalties that none of his attempts to get it into industry succeeded. i.e. his business sense wasn't any good, he was out of his depth dealing with massive defence companies or perhaps the companies were nasty and trying to screw him over.

There is an nice article on Starlite in Fortean Times 276 (June 2011)

From the article (written by Merrily Harpur):

"It was at this point (1993) - just when the world and I expected news of a deal which would make Ward a hugely rich man and the world a safer, and perhaps completely different place - that the story of Starlite went dark.

Or at least the narrative seemed to pass from the product to its mercurical inventor, described by Pohling-Brown (a journalist working for Jane's International Defence Weekly) as "a true British eccentric", refusing even to patent his invention because he would then have to reveal its formula. According to her, "He subsequently formed relationships with various defence companies...but was afraid that he would be fobbed off with a relatively meagre lump sum while any company he dealt with would profit much more and take the credit. And so some at least seemed to want to do. So afraid of this was he that it was said that his daughter accompanied him to tests and meetings with a hoover in case small pieces should become detached...He certainly entered talks with Boeing in the late Nineties, but again negotiations collapsed, each side blaming the other."

Unfortunately there appears to be no internet version of the article, and I don't have the electronic version of Fortean TImes, just the paper version.

I could photograph the article with my phone and put it in here, perhaps, if you are very interested. It may be readable with magnification via the PC

 

[AlexH]

Don't worry, @Venusian Broon, I believe you! Thanks for the quote. Funnily enough, a similar thing happens in the story I mentioned in my opening post.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Don't worry, @Venusian Broon, I believe you! Thanks for the quote. Funnily enough, a similar thing happens in the story I mentioned in my opening post.

Oddly enough in one of your links, Paul Ryder from Ashton under Lyne has typed out a fair chunk of the article I'm quoting from. (My bit follows on from his!)

 

[Ursa major]

and while there was blackening and bubbling, it was most likely whatever bonding agents he used to turn whatever it was into a sticky paste rather than the material itself

I believe that the bubbling is part of how Starlite is meant to work.

From the beginning of the Wikipedia article on Starlite:

Starlite is an intumescent material

On following the link, one can find:

Soft Char​

​

These intumescents produce a light char, which is a poor conductor of heat, thus retarding heat transfer. Typically the light char consist of microporous carbonaceous foam formed by a chemical reaction of three main components: ammonium polyphosphate, pentaerythritol and melamine.[citation needed] The reaction takes place in a matrix formed by the molten binder which is typically based on vinyl acetate copolymers or styrene acrylates.​

​

Ablative coatings contain a significant amount of hydrates. When the hydrates are heated, they decompose, and water vapour is released, which has a cooling effect. Once the water is spent, the insulation characteristics of the char that remains can slow down heat transfer from the exposed side to the unexposed side of an assembly.​

​

Soft char products are typically used in thin film intumescents for fireproofing structural steel as well as in firestop pillows. Typically, the expansion pressure that is created for these products is very low, because the soft carbonaceous char has little substance, which is beneficial if the aim is to produce a layer of insulation.​

Note: Char is "the solid material that remains after light gases (e.g. coal gas) and tar have been driven out or released from a carbonaceous material during the initial stage of combustion, which is known as carbonization, charring, devolatilization or pyrolysis".

 

[Dave]

Apart from the TV clips, my initial main problem was that there was clearly a chemical reaction taking place. In a chemical reaction there is a physical change from the reactants to the products. I found that to be incompatible with the idea of an inert substance that is withstanding applied heat.

However, what @Ursa major has just posted, together with the earlier reports that the substance as a paste doesn't last long on objects, well maybe that is how it actually works. It takes in heat in an endothermic reaction; it absorbs heat from its environment and that absorbed energy provides the activation energy for the reaction to occur. It is not an inert substance at all, instead it must be taking in a huge amount of heat; quite extraordinary amounts of heat, but this is something I can actually believe, as it is obviously an extraordinary substance. Totally unsuitable for aircraft wings though, unless you repaint them constantly, but as @.matthew. said earlier, you could coat a fireman's uniform.

 

[.matthew.]

Saw the video and remembered this thread

 

[Dave]

Thanks, that video explains much about the history, secrecy and chemistry. It also explains the simulated nuclear test which was done with lasers. It does seem that it worked as an ablative shield and as an intumescent paint. It is possible that Maurice Ward made up stuff, such as it being a plastic, to maintain his fanatical secrecy. He wasn't a great businessman as he could have been very wealthy from this, but it is also clear that many substances have similar properties, and that those of Starlite may well have been overstated. I withdraw my earlier scepticism. I think it was the part:

...it was banned due to it being so powerful...

that made me so sceptical.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Saw the video and remembered this thread

Pretty much nails it, imo. A smart guy.

 

[Parson]

Saw the video and remembered this thread

Wow! I loved that video. That's someone who does his homework and must be pretty bright to being with.