When metal is too clean in space to be connected directly into space, everything seems to blink and silent but behind that void lies a phenomenon so striking that NASA engineers must take great care of life: Cold Welding or cold welding which brings two pieces of metal together by itself.

We have never seen such a picture on earth because the surface of all types of metals will be covered with a layer of film oxide, sometimes with an additional layer of moisture or grease from air pollution.Some of these layers are not visible to the naked eye but instead act as a barrier between two metal pieces when touching another metal in ordinary atmosphere so that atoms on both sides can't really touch each other.

But in space, the rules of everything have changed because there is a total loss of natural air - no air, no oxygen, no moisture, dust or any other contaminants. Metallic skin is clean at an atomic level and when same metals such as iron and steel or aluminum and aluminium collide under this condition what happens is... its atoms are completely unaware that they are pieces together.

Atoms that touch the surface are instantly held together by metallic bonding, resulting in a single fusion at atomic level. This phenomenon is called cool bonding because it does not require any heat as opposed to common metal bonds which need fire or plasma.

The result is that the two metals are so tightly bonded together that they have to be separated by a tremendous force, known as putting two pieces of steel close together and immediately becoming one piece.

This phenomenon has become a major problem for the space industry because tools or parts of craft may accidentally be connected to each other if they are not carefully designed, such as an outlet lock, a switchboard or rotary part that can get stuck so tightly that it cannot move.So NASA and ESA engineers (European Space Agency) have to specially design craft coating metal with special materials or using various alloys to avoid direct contact between similar metals.

Sometimes even moving parts in a solar laboratory on Earth has to be done with caution because cold welding has already caused damage to the test equipment several times.

Although it may seem like a disadvantage, in reality this is what inspired some technologies such as the process of compression connection in electronics and attachment to certain types of semiconductors because they do not generate heat or change shape.

Simply put, in space, pure metal that is too clean will fuse itself together into one flesh as if it had forgotten to be a piece of humanity!

Composite image: Grok
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