Plastic That Can Withstand A Nuclear Blast?

Maurice Ward pulls aside a red suspender and reaches into his shirt pocket. Out comes a thin, cream-colored rectangle about the size of a bathroom tile. Before handing it to a visitor, he hesitates, aware that this nondescript plastic may represent a breakthrough in materials science that rivals John Wesley Hyatt's invention of plastic in 1869. "This is only to look at," he cautions, "not to walk away with."

Ward's brainchild, which he calls Starlite, is waxy to the touch and as stiff as rubber sheeting. This piece is covered with marks, and Ward points to a faint discoloration at the center. "That one's from Foulness," he says, referring to 1990 tests at Britain's answer to Los Alamos National Laboratory. Scientists at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Foulness, 50 miles east of London, bombarded the tile with lasers that simulate the heat of a nuclear explosion.