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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."
Here's a photo of it. In the middle, kinda hard to make out http://f.cl.ly/items/1S2W2w3X0z13450i440Z/black.jpg
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.
Just in time for Nigel Tufnel Day.
"It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is: 'None. None more black.' "
Best rock movie ever.
I can see the fnords!
It *is* possible to create nanotube based semiconductors by carefully introducing latice defects into the tube walls. (Creates a nanotube diode)
Sorry, paywalled:
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.matsci.34.040203.112300
Combined, the two technologies could be used to fashion an absurdly efficient solar collector. The problem is that not all photons are created equally, and that absorbed spectra might not carry sufficient energy to hop the bandgap. This would only cause the nanotubes to get hot, and reemit the photons only to be captured again by the neighbors.
Perhaps if total energy absorption is high enough, then multiple photons could be used to hop the gap, (like in red light on chlorophyll) but that would have to be some strange juju.
While soot contains nanotubes, it also contains other fullerenes, and amorphous carbon microparticles.
This subsrance, on the other had, is nothing but nanotubes, and in a very densely packed, and orderly configuration.
Devil in the details and all that.
I see nanotubes and I want them painted black...
Black is both a better radiator, and a better absorber. As for the SR-71 "Finished aircraft were painted a dark blue, almost black to increase the emission of internal heat (fuel acted as a heat sink for avionics cooling) and to act as camouflage against the night sky." So, it was a combination of things.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Why'd you make him black?
Because I wanted him to be perfect.
"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
Where exactly do you draw the line for 'life begins', and why?
Well, I don't know what the OP would say, but in scientific circles, the question was quite clearly answered back in the mid-1800s, by Louis Pasteur et al. And the clear answer was: It doesn't. We may not know what happened 4.5 billion years ago when our planet was young, but today it's rather well determined that life only continues as a branch of earlier life.
This applies to us humans as it does to everything else living on the planet. The instance of fertilization of an ovum by a sperm doesn't create a new life; it merges two previous living creatures into a single living creature. The participants are at all times alive, and no new life is created.
And note that human ova and sperm are quite definitely human. Straightforward DNA tests will verify this.
The whole religious issue of when "life" begins is bogus. It doesn't. At least, not on our planet. People who claim it does simply don't understand how our reproductive process works. (This doesn't prevent them from reproducing, of course; they don't need to understand for it to work.)
Now I'll wander off, humming Every Sperm is Sacred ...
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Yes, this guy has it right. "When does life begin" is a dumb question. If it wasn't, people wouldn't be able to argue about it endlessly. As for whether it's "ok" for a host to kill a half-formed human... probably not. But I'll never be a host, so what do I know.
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.
What a thread! Douglas Adams and SpınÌal Tap all in one!
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
I prefer to use "able to procreate" as part of the definition, so that anything that hasn't reached sexual maturity isn't considered alive.
It could be fun to argue for such a definition of "when life begins". It immediately follows from this definition that it's OK to kill a child that hasn't reached puberty. Somehow, I sorta suspect that a lot of people wouldn't be comfortable with this.
OTOH, there's an old Jewish joke, to the effect that kids aren't considered living human beings until they get their medical or law degree.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Personhood is really what's of interest ... when does the thing that could become a person ... do so (and thus obviously gain the rights to protection from murder from our society).
We might want to be careful with what term we use. Consider that in the US, the legal system has conferred "personhood" on corporations. So in US law, you can be a "person" without even being alive.
Also, US law clearly doesn't protect a "person" from being murdered. It's perfectly legal for the officers of a corporate person to dissolve the corporation, ending its existence. No court would charge them with murder for such an act. It's also legal for one corporation to buy another and merge with it. If I were to kill and eat you (thus incorporating you into my "personhood"), I'd be definitely charged with a crime, but corporate "persons" do this to each other every day, and nobody blinks an eye.
So, at least in the US, asking when "personhood" begins might not be at all what you want determined. Under US law, a "person" can be created out of nothing, by filing the appropriate legal papers with the right government agency. Also, such a "person" can be legally owned by another (i.e., held in slavery), and can be destroyed at will.
Maybe there's a better term, that doesn't already have such a bizarre legal definition.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
When it is no longer attached to the mother. Until then, it is literally a parasite on the mother until then.
Pretty simple question to answer rationally.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on