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Graphene Aerogel Takes World's Lightest Material Crown

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-don't-feel-a-thing dept.

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."

1 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Enter the new airship age ... by RichMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.