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NASA Creates Super-Black Carbon Nanotube Coating
An anonymous reader writes "NASA has just revealed a new, super-black material, claiming it is the most light absorbent material ever developed, and capable of absorbing 99% of ultraviolet, infrared, far-infrared, and visible light. The super-black material is about 10,000 times thinner than a human hair and created using carbon nanotubes. Those nanotubes are positioned and grown on multiple other materials including silicon, stainless steel, and titanium. The process of applying the coating requires heating the surface up to 1,382 degrees in an oven filled with a 'carbon-coating feedstock gas.' As well as being up to 100x more absorbent than anything that has come before, the coating is significantly lighter than the black paint and epoxy commonly used today to absorb light. Because the light absorption level is so high, the super-black material will also keep temperatures down for the instruments it is used on. And that very high absorption rate brings one final big advantage: it allows measurements to be taken at much greater distances in space because it removes the light emitted from around planets and stars as well as any generally high-contrast area of space."
Black don't crack. And neither will these nanotubes.
... it's full of stars!
Here's a photo of it. In the middle, kinda hard to make out http://f.cl.ly/items/1S2W2w3X0z13450i440Z/black.jpg
Since the scale wasn't mentioned, unless you read TFA.
Hmm. This would be awesomes for people who put solar heat collectors on their roofs in the Great White North. I wonder how soon it can be done affordably.
Better market prospect for that than Solyndra.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One of the first uses will be the cover of the "Smell The Glove" re-issue
Seriously, this was released to the media about 3 years or so ago, and touted as "scientists create blackest material ever".
Here is a link to a wired magazine article from march 2009:
http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/ultrablack/
Must be a slow news week.
i wonder if this stuff will find applications in night-vision cloaking (far infrared), or in making more efficient solar cells by absorbing nearly all useful incident light?
could it be used on CCD arrays to make them more light-sensitive?
I think I've just found the material I want for the pigment of my next tattoo.
...it ain't black, it's charcoal grey.
<g>
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
...new super black nanotube found to have mysteriously large penis
This sounds like the perfect material to cover up those pesky stars.
1,382 degrees ? how exactly did they come up with that number? Here is Google at help:
1,382F = 750 C
.... used to call that stuff soot?
The article states: "The blacker the material, the more heat it radiates away." I always thought that since black materials don't reflect light that they absorb heat. I have always heard that black clothes and black cars are hotter. However, I once read that the Blackbird SR-71 was painted black for the cooling effect. Could someone make sense of this for me?
I see nanotubes and I want them painted black...
if don't, i think this material must look surreal, like some sort of "inserted cartoon" in the reality.
The Republican party is now researching ways to allow candidates to withstand temperatures of 1,382.
(You might need to be a Daily Show viewer to understand...)
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Being the color of Severian's cloak in Shadow of the Torturer.
If the nanotubes absorb light, wouldn't instruments coated with the material tend to get warmer rather than stay cooler?
NR
Put your analyst on danger money baby, now.
It was first developed, to the best of my knowledge, jointly by researchers at RPI and Rice in Jan 2008. Here's their presentation and here's a link showing the date.
In fact, their material is ten times darker than the one apparently developed by NASA, with a reflectivity of 0.05% compared to NASA's 0.5%.
"There is none Blacker"
"It's like, how much more black could it be? And the answer is none, none more black."
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
They're gonna paint the new Stealth Fighter with it. Or, they already have a 99.999% version ready to go for the B-3 Opportunity...
Guy who modded this -1 is just jealous hes not black
I'm more interested in seeing what the material looks like at a standard scale, preferably in a well-lit room and in motion. It reminds me (as its predecessor did a few years back) of the fuligin cloaks worn by torturers in the Book of the New Sun. One property of those was that due to the high absorption of light, they looked less like a thing of substance and more like a void or a deep shadow. I can imagine that you'd lose all shape information save for the outline of the material and whatever it is covering.
Your brain is not a computer.
Zaphod's attention however was elsewhere. His attention was riveted on the ship standing next to Hotblack Desiato's limo. His mouths hung open.
"That," he said, "that ... is really bad for the eyes ..."
Ford looked. He too stood astonished.
It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it.
"It's so ... black!" said Ford Prefect, "you can hardly make out its shape ... light just seems to fall into it!"
Zaphod said nothing. He had simply fallen in love.
The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible to tell how close you were standing to it.
"Your eyes just slide off it ..." said Ford in wonder. It was an emotional moment. He bit his lip.
So, it absorbs 99% and is the most absorbent material yet, 100 times more absorbant than the previous. Lets consider that;
The new material reflects 1% and the previous runner up, being 100 times more reflective, reflected 100%?
Does this mean that it has a huge negative "thinness"? Sigh.
If the American government is not going to fund NASA (properly), can they at least put up a paypal account/donation thingy or something?
>$US600Billion for military
$US20Billion for NASA
Sorry, but as a foreigner I'm happy to throw a couple of regular bucks for a good cause.
.
... solar collectors. One could make a hell of a hot water heater from a base that absorbed 99% of the (visible part of the) spectrum. One could make a fairly impressive collector for the generation of electricity as well. Imagine a 1 km^2 south-facing hillside covered with flat black panels under a transparent insulated airtight roof, leading up to a hilltop tower filled with turbines (top of tower some km or so above the air intake at the base of the hill). 700 megawatts (or so) peak absorption, even allowing for inefficiencies should allow for 100-200 MW peak electrical production. Ten such hills/towers is a GW of production that works best at just the time of day that demand for electricity peaks in hot climates. And running the collector up a hillside is such an obvious improvement over e.g. the Australian model of a solar updraft tower poking straight up out of a plain covered with the collector. Why engineer a kilometer plus high tower straight up in the middle of a flat when nature provides you with all or most of that kilometer for free, at the top of a slope conveniently tipped to optimize the reception of solar flux? Not to mention the fact that many such hillsides are "wasted space" as far as utility is concerned, good for nothing but a view and located where nobody can even appreciate the view.
Sadly, all that they will do with this new material, I'm sure, is use it to build better stealth aircraft or the like. I'm surprised it isn't classified.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
If this works right, it might absorb radar and other emissions. If so, then this would be a good coat for military aircraft.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Time to paint my car... police speed radars will never get me again!
The program under which Solyndra got funding had its merits. Solyndra's initial application was even handled under Bush, according to the law.
The way the Obama administration handled it after that was the scandal.
Does this mean that it has a huge negative "thinness"? Sigh.
Of course not. Thinness is inverse thickness, not negative thickness.
Since it absorbs across the spectrum, it would also radiate across the spectrum. This should be a major boon for radiant cooling applications.
This just means that those 'black projects' the Pentagon is so fond of funding will be even blacker.
Have gnu, will travel.
Ah, yes the under the table deal with bush was fine, but when it came to roost under Obama, it's his fault? typical
Also Obama's fault, Jobless, the economy and 9/11.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I thought Obama was supposed to be better: transparent, honest. At least that's how the package was sold.
Under Bush, the process for approval began according to the law. However, by the end of his riegn Energy and OMB had serious questions about Solyndra's application. Then Obama took over, backed by Solyndra investors, and approval was rushed through despite the lack of required due diligence. And then it got worse.
And three years into Obama's rule, when exactly does anything become his fault? At what point does he not get to blame Bush for everything he does wrong?
http://www.zazzle.com/im_only_wearing_black_tshirt-235443451704437115