The Amazing Properties of Aerogel

RideMax writes "We all know NASA is using a substance called 'aerogel' in the Stardust spacecraft to catch pieces of the Wild-2 comet. The NYT is running an article about some other amazing aerogel properties. My favorite quote: 'It's the lowest density of any solid, and it has the highest thermoinsulation properties. Though it would be very expensive, you could take a two- or three-bedroom house, insulate it with aerogel, and you could heat the house with a candle. But eventually the house would become too hot.'" We've looked at Aerogel before.

Comments

Aerogel Facts and a Picture

[dekashizl]

Some facts, from JPL Aerogel site:

• It is 99.8% Air
• Provides 39 times more insulating than the best fiberglass insulation
• Is 1,000 times less dense than glass
• Was used on the Mars Pathfinder rover

And a cool picture of aerogel in somebody's hand.

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For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

balsa wood in the right structure can do as much..

[Anonymous Coward]

It also has incredible compressive strength. "It can take 2,000 times its body weight without damage," Dr. Tsou said. NASA's Web site shows a 2-gram cube of aerogel (less than 0.1 ounce) supporting a 2.5-kilogram brick (about 5.5 pounds).

That particular example doesn't seem that impressive, I used to build balsa wood structures that would hold over 600 lbs(~270kg), with only 15 grams of balsa wood and glue, with strict rules on how it could be built. The world record is somewhere in the 1500 lb mark with a similar weight of wood.

Re:R-factor?

[dekashizl]

Not sure if all Aerogels are created equally, but this is from 1999 NASA article on Aerogel:
"A single one-inch thick windowpane of silica aerogel is equivalent to the insulation provided by 20 windowpanes of glass (R-20 insulation factor)."

--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

my god...

[ruebarb]

let me get this straight....virtually unbelieveable insulation at the coldest of temperatures...creating super greenhouses/habitats and so forth...

improves the desalination of seawater plants a thousand fold...

my god....all we have to do is find a cheap or easier way to produce (like we do with virtually everything in the world in the free enterprise system) and we can offer virtually energy free habitats (excess heat can be channelled into electronics and solar can pick up the rest) - as well as a cheap water supply for the world...

christ...someone get me some chemists and a few venture capitalists.....this is incredible... - and it's real and now...not like those carbon nanofibers people want to use to create space elevators...

pax
RB

Re:my god...

[Znork]

"Imagine if your house were perfectly insulated, then you would only need to suck out the heat added by the things inside it (200W per person, another 200W per computer)."

Well, and the CO2. And the water vapour. And whatever toxics that leak in miniscule amounts from materials inside.

You dont have to imagine it, it's been tried. It was found to profoundly suck, as people got sick and the houses molded or rotted.

The technology for building houses with perfect insulation has been here for a long time. Unfortunately, the problem isnt the insulation anymore, the problem is the ventilation. But come up with a highly efficient and cheap heat exchanger system and you could solve that too :).

Re:balsa wood in the right structure can do as muc

[Quixote]

Here is brick-on-aerogel picture. Looks quite cool.

Photos

[Anonymous Coward]

Some cool shots.

What people don't know about aerogel

[state*less]

Here's a nerdy factiod about aerogel that might help your processor speed.

There has been some close research into using substances like aerogel to improve processor speeds. Apparently the substances can be used as very efficient insulators between traces and components. This is because aerogel and substances like it are mostly made of air, which has a very high dielectric constant so aerogel itself is a very good insulator.

It's better described here

more on aerogel

[movefaster]

I have a friend who works on this. Here is a NASA newspaper article on her work; here is her website, showing aerogel in many different configurations. If you want to know more about it, you could always drop her a line.

While I'm sure aerogel has many pracitcal uses (trying not to fall asleep here), the "cool" factor is also very high. I've seen some of her samples, and everything the article says is correct. It's so light it feels like the wind could take it; in fact, if you drop it in water, I think it dissolves. Since the material is so expensive, it's obviously something you don't want to do, since every last piece is precious.

As you might imagine, a material that's ultra-light and 'holographic' has artistic applications, too. The "brain" image made it onto the cover of Nature neuroscience, and wouldn't look out of place in a design magazine. When you see it up close, the image seems to be 'embedded' in the material, even though it's so light you could easily crush it with your hand. The airiness and delicacy of the material makes the image that much more striking.

While we're all attuned to the utilitarian value of materials like this, it's always neat to see what people outside of engineering can do with them.

Practical Application

[aiken_d]

See CDT Water for one practical, functional application of aerogel.

In short, they push contaminated water through aerogel and use electrodes to pull ionic molecules apart. The ions get caught in the aerogel mesh, and the purified water flows through. At least, that's my layman's understanding of it.

Cheers
-b