Graphene Aerogel Takes World's Lightest Material Crown

cylonlover writes "Not even a year after it claimed the title of the world's lightest material, aerographite has been knocked off its crown by a new aerogel made from graphene. Created by a research team from China's Zhejiang University in the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering lab headed by Professor Gao Chao, the ultra-light aerogel has a density of just 0.16 mg/cm3, which is lower than that of helium and just twice that of hydrogen."

Comments

Enter the new airship age ...

[RichMan]

Make a bag around it. Remove the air. We have an airship with the lift somewhere between H and He.

So how strong is the aerogel? How big a bag can we make and have it support atmospheric pressure on the other side? That will really determine the lift efficiency.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[h4rr4r]

You still have the weather issues that make airships impractical and now your lifting agent costs billions per fill. That is just the first two problems.

Re:I'd believe it if you added the word "solid"

[Lithdren]

Wouldn't the use of the world "Aerogel" sorta indicate that we're talking about a solid?

Or even the term "Material" in context...I mean..using this line of thought you're using, a vaccume is technically lighter, I mean, you didn't specify the lightest 'gas' after all.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Ed Avis]

It is normal to describe a material as light or heavy. These are shorthand for 'weighs less for a given volume' and 'weighs more for a given volume'. If you assume gravity is fixed - a reasonable assumption, since we all live on the same planet - this also implies 'less dense' and 'more dense'. What's the difficulty?