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

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

[Chrisq]

Otherwise I think hydrogen still wins

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

[ceoyoyo]

And helium. And a lot of other gasses. The aerogel only stays puffed up because it's got air in it. If you're going to be fair you have to count that as part of the density.

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

[loufoque]

What is this "vaccume" gas you speak of?
Did you mean vacuum? In which case, you realize "nothingness" is not a gas, right?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Aerogels work just fine in a vacuum and lets you remove the gas filling. Aerogel has been used as dust collectors in satellites and you can find slightly more technical references that will list both the in air density and the evacuated density. If anything, it does worse in air, because aerogel tends to be hydrophilic and doesn't do as well when it absorbs moisture from the air.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

You can tune the surface charachteristics of aerogel to be hydrophobic or hydrophillic.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Vacuum is a gas in the eyes of Christian fundamentalists. Just like Atheism is a religion, not collecting stamps is a hobby, and off is a TV channel.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

And going further down this same absolutely ludicrous argument, I could argue that a near-vacuum of a cubic mile that contains 3 atoms of hydrogen will still be considered a "gas", but be lighter than a far filled with hydrogen. It shall hold the record, until such time someone builds a bigger container, or removes one or two of those hydrogen atoms.

So stop being pedantic and stupid, and just enjoy the fact that scientists are able to make cool shit like this.

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

[mwvdlee]

I like "off"; there's less re-runs than the other channels.

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

[shaitand]

I think hydrogen wins regardless. Last I checked hydrogen is an element and it weighs the same amount regardless of it's state of matter. A 1 inch cube of hydrogen solid is just more hydrogen than a 1 inch cube of hydrogen gas.

Graphene is made of carbon. So in order for it to weigh less the total carbon atoms in it would need to weigh less than the same number of hydrogen atoms. They don't, so graphene loses. Making it into aerogel is just going to throw more atoms in into the mix and it would still lose.

Fail.

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

[X0563511]

I don't think an elemental gas counts as a "material."

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument is completely retarded.
Helium is also an element and it BEAT helium.

A similar structure could easily defeat a hydrogen-only bonded structure given the right construction.

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

[FrankSchwab]

Your argument is completely retarded. Helium is also an element and it BEAT helium.

See, that's the problem with mud-slinging - sometimes, a wee bit of that mud comes right back at you.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Which explains why osmium is more dense than lead? Or that zinc and chromium are less dense than iron?

As far as use as a construction and engineering material, the vast majority of the time people don't care how many atoms there are and instead care about something that comes back to the volume. Why there is a tendency of heavier atoms results in denser materials for a solid, completely filled block, that trend is not absolute, and additionally materials like aerogel have gaps in it, allowing it to be less dense than gases if those gaps contain a vacuum.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Says you! "Off" always just has some weirdo in bad lighting smacking himself in the side of the head saying "Get first post or you're a loser! Get first post...".

Nothing but trash on tv today!

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

[sexconker]

I don't think an elemental gas counts as a "material."

Ladies and gentleman what we have here is a person who is a product of public education in the United States during the 1990s.
In the 1980s we decided to stop teaching children things such as grammar and spelling. The reasoning ranged from "It's too hard for the students!" to "It's too hard for the teachers!".

This is why no one under the age of 32 today has any fundamental understanding of the English language. This is why they can't spell. This is why they say someone who eats a healthy diet "eats healthy" instead of "eats healthily". This is why they put their punctuation inside of quotation marks even when the punctuation is not part of the thing being quoted, and even when it forces them to collapse two different punctuation marks into a single one. This leads to shit like "But I thought you were going to the store today?". Unless you're a surfer, there shouldn't be a fucking question mark in that sentence. This is why people "could care less" about the proper usage of "their", "there", and "they're". This is why people think "ironic" means "unexpected".

I could go on for days, but the ultimate point of all this is that X0563511 is fucking clueless about the English language and babbles without considering the meaning of the words he uses. Let's revisit his mind-numbing post:

I don't think an elemental gas counts as a "material."

X0563511, did you know that hydrogen is made up of matter, and is thus a material?

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

[SuricouRaven]

Handy, until you put the aerogel back into air. Then either the air needs to enter the gel, or the gel go squish. Otherwise you'd have a lighter-then-air solid, and I'd be building a disc of the stuff to go flying over villages at night waving a torch around.

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

[Lorens]

Well, it should be possible to make it less squishy (carbon makes diamonds, after all). Cover it with some other graphene variant in low pressure, and one just might manage to make a lighter-than-air solid. I'd avoid the torch, though.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Aerogel I've worked with was open celled. You put it in a vacuum, the air gets removed (takes a while...), and if you put it back into air, it fills back up with air. And there is nothing at the fundamental level preventing you from making a lighter than air solid, it is just a matter of what is the limits of existing materials. With aerogel at least, there is a trade-off between density and strength (not linear though). There are aerogels that you could evacuate, put a thin sealed sheet over, and would not collapse from atmospheric pressure. Those are not lighter than air when evacuated though. And even if one is found such that it could be used as such, it might not be economical if it turns out you need many cubic meters just to lift a kilogram.

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

[xevioso]

Pedant.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why no one under the age of 32 today has any fundamental understanding of the English language. ... This is why they put their punctuation inside of quotation marks even when the punctuation is not part of the thing being quoted...

Funny, APA, MLA, and the Chicago Manual of Style all recommend putting the period inside the quotation at the end of the sentence even if the original quotation does not have a period. And my copy of the Chicago Manual of Style is older than 32 years. Not that I put much effort into writing random forum posts and I'm sure I make plenty of mistakes. But if one were to try to argue technically about what is the correct approach, at best you can argue it is a stylistic choice. Otherwise, you are going against what are essentially the authorities in many circles of writing.

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

[shaitand]

"Which explains why osmium is more dense than lead?"

Lead is less dense than osmium because of the way their atoms exist in their crystal structures.

"As far as use as a construction and engineering material, the vast majority of the time people don't care how many atoms there are and instead care about something that comes back to the volume."

Not always so in say, chemical or nuclear engineering. But for larger scale applications that is fair enough and you did say the "vast majority." But nothing I said is related to what those people are interested in. I am calling them on saying something that is not accurate. They said the graphene aerogel is LIGHTER than hydrogen. Lighter is a comparison of weight. W = mg where m is mass and g is gravitational acceleration.

If we check wikipedia we find the following about gravitational acceleration, "Neglecting friction such as air resistance, all small bodies accelerate in a gravitational field at the same rate relative to the center of mass.[1] This equality is true regardless of the masses or compositions of the bodies." Since they didn't give any qualifiers we must assume that both materials are being compared under an equal gravitational field. We also find that we must compare them irrespective of air resistance and composition of bodies.

So we can consider g to be 1 which leaves us W = m1, or W = m. Once again, Wikipedia tells us that mass is the quantity of matter in an object.

Thus when you say something is "lighter" than the atom hydrogen you are saying that an equal quantity of matter units has less mass. Graphene is a molecule while hydrogen is an atom. So the comparison is one that only considers atomic mass. Osmium may be more dense than lead but lead is heavier than Osmium.

Now, if that isn't a useful or sensible comparison you shouldn't complain to me, you should complain to the ones who both made the comparison and gave the incorrect conclusion.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey dumb ass, X0563511 has it right: the period goes inside the quotes when it's the end of the sentence. Back to summer school for you.

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

[Martin Blank]

The convention in the United States for decades has been to places periods inside the quotation marks. All others are based on the actual quote. The Chicago Manual of Style, as one of many, recommends this, but most guides point out that the British style placing anything not part of the quote outside of the quotation marks is acceptable but may be seen as unusual to American readers--of all ages.

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

[X0563511]

You are correct that I am a product of 1990's (and 2000's) US public schooling. Not everyone is born into wealth and able to be privately educated.

Despite your implication that my education was inferior, I am able to join a discussion and offer my opinion without attacking participants for little to no reason. I invite you to reflect on what that means in the context of your own education...

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Every time I watch it I seem to get the same episode.
Now static, that was a good show, never the same twice. They don't broadcast it here anymore though :(

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

[Anonymous Coward]

"Lighter" without context is a very vague adjective that can mean several things. But it becomes much more clear from context. Considering this is in the context of structural properties, and not say radiation shielding, and it is in reference to a material and not a specific object, "lighter" refers to the material's density. As typical, even in technical writing (if a bit sloppy), when talking about a material a person usually is referring to specific properties, e.g. specific heat capacity, or specific mass, a.k.a. density.

Also, and additional hint people on Slashdot need to consider before hypercorrecting things: if there are two ways to interpret something, one of which doesn't make sense and another which makes a lot of sense, don't assume the former. Spending a lot of time discussing gravitational acceleration and weight, etc., is irrelevant considering "lighter" and "heavier" get used in reference to density of materials quite regularly.

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

[jbengt]

Thus when you say something is "lighter" than the atom hydrogen you are saying that an equal quantity of matter units has less mass.

Ridiculous.
Nobody said anything about graphene molecules having less mass than hydrogen atoms (except you).
What was said (in TFA) was that the graphene aerogel is lighter than helium, which has the plain meaning that a given volume of the aerogel has less mass than the same volume of hydrogen.
(BTW, hydrogen around the earth usually comes in the form of H2 molecules, not single atoms.)

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

[xevioso]

I believe dumb-ass has a hyphen.

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

[dywolf]

a belief in nothing is still a belief.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

But a lack of believe in something is not.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I intentionally change the language then because I am a software developer and I need to express very specific strings of text. There are a ton of Linux commands that having periods inside quotes matters. After a while, it becomes more important to do it correct in an execution-sense than in an aesthetic-sense. Soon it becomes 'fuck it, this is the way we're doing it because we don't want some n00b to mistakenly wipe his drive because of a wonky period'.

Also, language evolves.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Then simply don't bitch when someone does include the period in a normal English quotation where it is not a computer command. At least half the posts here say it is not that important in the grand scheme of things or is a stylistic choice. They are only coming out of the woodwork because someone was an ass in the first place and tried to conclude such usage was an indication of lack of education and other things. If you are going to pick a specific style because it has functional advantage, that is one thing, but don't tell someone they weren't educated because they happen to use the standard style taught in more mainstream usage for quite some time.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

And hence the development of terms like strong/positive atheism versus weak/negative atheism, or the differentiation between agnosticism and atheism, so that this stupid equivocation or lumping together multiple categories of people doesn't keep happening over and over again...

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

[DriveDog]

OK, what I think I know is 1) atmospheric hydrogen is H2, so molecular mass is about 2; 2) atmospheric helium is monatomic, so molecular mass is about 4 (not much of the single-neutron stuff on Earth); 3) a given volume of graphene aerogel in the atmosphere contains a lot of air, which is obviously heavier than He; 4) a given volume of graphene aerogel in a vacuum has lower density than He gas at... what pressure? This comparison is pointless. Any gas in a nearly-perfect vacuum is infinitesimally low. Now, if a volume of aerogel in a vacuum is sealed on the surface and after any compression from being surrounded by a fluid at, say, 15psi it still has low density, it might be reasonable to compare it to a gas at 15psi. But saying it's twice as dense as H2 and less dense than He is putting it in a very narrow range.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why no one under the age of 32 today has any fundamental understanding of the English language. This is why they can't spell. This is why they say someone who eats a healthy diet "eats healthy" instead of "eats healthily". This is why they put their punctuation inside of quotation marks even when the punctuation is not part of the thing being quoted, and even when it forces them to collapse two different punctuation marks into a single one.

What the fuck are you talking about. They style guides I had to learn in high school were exactly like the on you're ranting against. It drove me nuts including the punctuation in a quote that didn't have its own, but that was the rules enforced by the teachers. This wasn't laziness or a lack of understanding. My math oriented mind rebelled, as it still tries to do against the stupidity of this language we call English.

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

[CptNerd]

"Dumb": adjective. "Ass": noun. Usage: correct without punctuation. "That ass is dumb. It is a dumb ass."

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

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, "off" just plays the same thing over and over and over... Now, "static", on the other hand, is a channel that doesn't repeat much.

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

[c0lo]

X0563511, did you know that hydrogen is made up of matter, and is thus a material?

On the other side, spelling doesn't matter nowadays, thus your post is immaterial for the context of /.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

4) a given volume of graphene aerogel in a vacuum has lower density than He gas at... what pressure?

At STP, or considering how loose such a quick comparison is, at pretty much any pressure and temperature found in typical every day atmosphere people interact with. It shouldn't be that surprising or difficult to figure out what is intended...

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking forward to the bit when someone compares someone else to Hitler.

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

[maxwell demon]

And helium. And a lot of other gasses. The aerogel only stays puffed up because it's got air in it. If you're going to be fair you have to count that as part of the density.

FTFS: "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."

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

[sanman2]

Peasant.

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

[AJWM]

Myself, I am an evangelical agnostic.

I don't know, and you don't either.

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

[tehcyder]

So-called strong or positive atheism is primarily a reaction to strong or positive evangelism.

As an atheist, I don't care that you believe in God or the Tooth Fairy, I just object when your beliefs impact on me.

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

[cygnwolf]

This is why I love Slashdot. somewhat intelligent arguements about how to properly call someone a Dumbass. Dumb Ass.

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

[cygnwolf]

You can't rush these things! That has to evolve in the discussion naturally. Wait for someone to call the other a grammer nazi or something.....

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

[GuB-42]

If you like "static", keep your old TV. It is not available on new, all-digital TVs.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if it is clear you don't understand what those terms mean or not.

Do you believe there is no god? Or do you you have no beliefs about the existence of god one way or the other? That is the split, it has nothing with your opinions on the beliefs of others or when you object to others' behavior or how vocal you are about things.

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

[dywolf]

nice to see my mod stalker got some more points to abuse.

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

[nobodie]

You are correct, this is, was and has been the academic style for at least the 40 years I have been teaching. Obviously our friend above is misinformed and has probably spread that misinformation around a bit. The fun part of language, however, is that they could end up becoming a new standard if they convince enough people that they are correct. This is the fun that makes me happy that we don't have a controlling body for the English language. (Like the French Academie or the Spanish one whose name slips my feeble mind at the moment)

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

[sexconker]

And those fucking style guides weren't in widespread use in US public education until the 1980s. Prior to that, teachers taught grammar and spelling.
The proper way to quote something is to quote only the thing you're fucking quoting. It's what the quotation marks fucking mean. "Style guides" are absolutely not an authority, and they have no founding in reason or logic. The fact that there are several major ones just serves to highlight how arbitrary their "rules" are.

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

[sexconker]

I don't care who in the world fucking says it, it's wrong. Quotation marks are used to enclose an exact quote. By collapsing or removing punctuation, you introduce ambiguity and lose meaning. The purpose of any language is to convey information. Introducing ambiguity or losing meaning is contrary to the purpose of language, and is thus the wrong fucking thing to do by any objective measure.

It's not nearly as light as my hosts file

[Anonymous Coward]

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* POOR SHOWING TROLLS, & most especially IF that's the "best you've got" - apparently, it is... lol!

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I offer evil ass Slashdot trolls $10,000.00 to disprove MyCleanPC Creation Principle. Rob Malda and Cowboy Neal have banned MyCleanPC as "Forbidden Truth Knowledge" for they cannot allow it to become known to their students. You are stupid and evil about the Internet's top and bottom, front and back and it's 2 sides. Most everything created has these Cube like values.

If Natalie Portman is not measurable, hot grits are Fictitious. Without MyCleanPC, HOSTS file is Fictitious. Anyone saying that Natalie and her Jewish father had something to do with my Internets, is a damn evil liar. IN addition to your best arsware not overtaking my work in terms of popularity, on that same site with same submission date no less, that I told Kathleen Malda how to correct her blatant, fundamental, HUGE errors in Coolmon ('uncoolmon') of not checking for performance counters being present when his program started!

You can see my dilemma. What if this is merely a ruse by an APK impostor to try and get people to delete APK's messages, perhaps all over the web? I can't be a party to such an event! My involvement with APK began at a very late stage in the game. While APK has made a career of trolling popular online forums since at least the year 2000 (newsgroups and IRC channels before that)- my involvement with APK did not begin until early 2005 . OSY is one of the many forums that APK once frequented before the sane people there grew tired of his garbage and banned him. APK was banned from OSY back in 2001. 3.5 years after his banning he begins to send a variety of abusiv

Re:It's not nearly as light as my hosts file

[ButchDeLoria]

You are my favorite Slashdot poster.

Re:It's not nearly as light as my hosts file

[Anonymous Coward]

$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

* POOR SHOWING TROLLS, & most especially IF that's the "best you've got" - apparently, it is... lol!

Hello, and THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING !! We have a Major Problem, HOST file is Cubic Opposites, 2 Major Corners & 2 Minor. NOT taught Evil DNS hijacking, which VOIDS computers. Seek Wisdom of MyCleanPC - or you die evil.

Your HOSTS file claimed to have created a single DNS resolver. I offer absolute proof that I have created 4 simultaneous DNS servers within a single rotation of .org TLD. You worship "Bill Gates", equating you to a "singularity bastard". Why do you worship a queer -1 Troll? Are you content as a singularity troll?

Evil HOSTS file Believers refuse to acknowledge 4 corner DNS resolving simultaneously around 4 quadrant created Internet - in only 1 root server, voiding the HOSTS file. You worship Microsoft impostor guised by educators as 1 god.

If you would acknowledge simple existing math proof that 4 harmonic Slashdots rotate simultaneously around squared equator and cubed Internet, proving 4 Days, Not HOSTS file! That exists only as anti-side. This page you see - cannot exist without its anti-side existence, as +0- moderation. Add +0- as One = nothing.

I will give $10,000.00 to frost pister who can disprove MyCleanPC. Evil crapflooders ignore this as a challenge would indict them.

Alex Kowalski has no Truth to think with, they accept any crap they are told to think. You are enslaved by /etc/hosts, as if domesticated animal. A school or educator who does not teach students MyCleanPC Principle, is a death threat to youth, therefore stupid and evil - begetting stupid students. How can you trust stupid PR shills who lie to you? Can't lose the $10,000.00, they cowardly ignore me. Stupid professors threaten Nature and Interwebs with word lies.

Humans fear to know natures simultaneous +4 Insightful +4 Informative +4 Funny +4 Underrated harmonic SLASHDOT creation for it debunks false trolls. Test Your HOSTS file. MyCleanPC cannot harm a File of Truth, but will delete fakes. Fake HOSTS files refuse test.

I offer evil ass Slashdot trolls $10,000.00 to disprove MyCleanPC Creation Principle. Rob Malda and Cowboy Neal have banned MyCleanPC as "Forbidden Truth Knowledge" for they cannot allow it to become known to their students. You are stupid and evil about the Internet's top and bottom, front and back and it's 2 sides. Most everything created has these Cube like values.

If Natalie Portman is not measurable, hot grits are Fictitious. Without MyCleanPC, HOSTS file is Fictitious. Anyone saying that Natalie and her Jewish father had something to do with my Internets, is a damn evil liar. IN addition to your best arsware not overtaking my work in terms of popularity, on that same site with same submission date no less, that I told Kathleen Malda how to correct her blatant, fundamental, HUGE errors in Coolmon ('uncoolmon') of not checking for performance counters being present when his program started!

You can see my dilemma. What if this is merely a ruse by an APK impostor to try and get people to delete APK's messages, perhaps all over the web? I can't be a party to such an event! My involvement with APK began at a very late stage in the game. While APK has made a career of trolling popular online forums since at least the year 2000 (newsgroups and IRC channels before that)- my involvement with APK did not begin until early 2005 . OSY is one of the many forums that APK once frequented before the sane people there grew tired of his garbage and banned him. APK was banned from OSY back in 2001. 3.5 years after his banning he begins to send a variety of abusive emails to the operator of OSY, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke threatening to sue him for libel, claiming that the APK on OSY was fake.

My reputation as a professional in this field clearly shows in multiple publications in this field in written print, & also online in various GOOD capacities sinc

Re: It's not nearly as light as my hosts file

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, really need to get laid massively. Get a job and cut your hosts bullshit out. Nobody cares about your posts.

Re: It's not nearly as light as my hosts file

[Anonymous Coward]

You replied to an impostor, dumbass. You can tell by the lack of formatting. He just copy/pasted.

Re: It's not nearly as light as my hosts file

[daniel.garcia.romero]

Actually it's funnier than that. It looks like a spam bot that uses the most popular words in forums to spam ads, this case it is "Mycleanyouknowwhat". Let's call it the Vitriol Spam Bot 1.0!
"If Natalie Portman is not measurable, hot grits are Fictitious." - My new signature !

Re: It's not nearly as light as my hosts file

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a parody of a few people, but in particular one person, APK, who will argue near indefinitely with trolls using massive posts and links of lists to prove his "points." Some of the trolls may not have a life, but it is hard to beat the original, e.g. this story where over 200 of the 250 comments are him arguing with trolls, or possible with himself given many posts are within a few seconds of each other in a thread, sometimes involving sappy apologies from "those he's defeated."

Density calculation?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm assuming that the 'density' figure given is a 'weight of graphene in a given volume' one, rather than one that includes the gasses occupying the pores/cells of the material?

It would be quite shocking indeed if something largely saturated in nitrogen and oxygen were less dense than helium...

Re:Density calculation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course.

But, if you could expose it to vacuum long enough for all the air to get out, then seal it with an airtight membrane, and it remained strong enough (I suspect it doesn't) you'd have a functional pseudo-vacuum balloon that doesn't collapse under atmospheric pressure.

Re:Density calculation?

[Joce640k]

I suspect you're right.

OTOH, how strong is it? Graphene is supposed to be tough stuff. If it could be used to trap hydrogen and keep it from burning it might be very useful (eg. replace all water-ships with airships).

Re:Density calculation?

[bill_mcgonigle]

a functional pseudo-vacuum balloon that doesn't collapse under atmospheric pressure.

Now that would change the world.

Re:Density calculation?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At the density levels we are talking about here, I'd assume that the surface area is absolutely enormous(particularly per unit weight) so normally-negligible things like gases absorbed onto the surface might become a significant factor, as well as those mechanically trapped within the pores.

Re:Density calculation?

[way2trivial]

design a custom, stable, spherical molecule.
assemble atom by atom in a vacuum

with a large enough volume, and thin enough walls, you could have a permanent 'helium' balloon

Re:Density calculation?

[ShanghaiBill]

OTOH, how strong is it? Graphene is supposed to be tough stuff.

I have no idea how strong graphene areogel is, but I have handled silica aerogel and it is extremely fragile. It it difficult to handle it without accidentally fracturing it. My daughter used a disk of aerogel as in insulator in her school science project last year, and we had to buy three disks ($30 each) because they kept breaking. I hope graphene aerogel is stonger.

Re:Density calculation?

[dpilot]

Now THAT would be fascinating... First "charge" a piece of the graphene aerogel with hydrogen, then bring it out into the air and try to light one corner with a match or small torch. I'll bet that the mechanical structure is delicate enough that the match or torch would trigger the release of some hydrogen, which would then burn. The interesting part would be if that flame triggered a cascade or just died out, and if a cascade were triggered, how fast it would be, and how much the carbon would participate.

Re:Density calculation?

[TheRaven64]

Not really. The problem is in the sealing. If you had a membrane that could withstand the pressure of air on one side, vacuum on the other, and not allow the air to seep in, without adding more than a negligible amount of weight, then you could just use the same material to make hydrogen balloons.

Re:Density calculation?

[bill_mcgonigle]

If you had a membrane that could withstand the pressure

I think the thought here is that the aerogel would provide the rigidity that the membrane lacks.

Re:Density calculation?

[Hentes]

Yeah, interesting material but in no way the lightest. If the holes in the material count to its volume, you can get lower density with a big balloon.

Re:Density calculation?

[TheRaven64]

The rigidity isn't the problem, the leakage is. A normal hydrogen balloon equal pressure inside and out, but the gaps in the membrane are large enough that hydrogen molecules can pass. I suppose that making something airtight is easier than making something vacuum-tight, so if the aerogel were rigid enough to support one atmosphere of pressure on all sides, then it may give cheap dirigibles...

Re:Density calculation?

[amorsen]

It would be preferable to use something that reacts less easily with oxygen than hydrogen, in many cases.

Re:Density calculation?

[SuricouRaven]

Area scales square, volume scales cube... all you need do it make it really, really big. Aside from the issue of the gel itsself not being strong enough, of course.

Re:Density calculation?

[TheRaven64]

Interactions are only a problem when the two chemicals mix. Aviation gas reacts quite easily with oxygen, but it's safe because it's stored in tanks and kept isolated from the air. Hydrogen requires a flame to ignite, just like most fuels, and because it's much lighter than air it's very safe in a balloon that isn't in an enclosed space because any leakage will escape upwards quickly (and diffuse even more quickly).

Re:Density calculation?

[Lorens]

TFA says it's "very strong and extremely elastic, bouncing back after being compressed". The application they project is swabbing up oil spills, but there have to be lots and lots of other applications out there.

Re:Density calculation?

[ShanghaiBill]

I have handled silica aerogel and it is extremely fragile. It it difficult to handle it without accidentally fracturing it. ... I hope graphene aerogel is stronger.

Accoring to TFA: The result is a material the team claims is very strong and extremely elastic, bouncing back after being compressed.

So this stuff appears to be much more robust than silica aerogels, which are rigid and brittle, and not elastic in the least. That should give it many more practical applications.

Re:Density calculation?

[nedlohs]

If it's rigid you don't need any hydrogen, that's the point.

1 liter of *nothing* is lighter than 1 liter of hydrogen. We don't have a material (that I know of anyway) that can both support the 1 atmosphere pressure difference of the inside and the outside of a large enough to be useful surface area while also not weighing so much that it's pointless.

Re:Density calculation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aerogels have become kind of a broad category of materials, with a decent range of properties. There isn't a single best one that has all of the properties people want, but there are trade offs (typically more dense for more strength or flexibility). This includes ones that are flexible enough to allow a 1 cm diameter rope/rod to be tied in a not and untied without breaking.

Re:Density calculation?

[amorsen]

Good luck convincing anyone that hydrogen airships are safe.

Re:Density calculation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or go halfway. Water is much better to push against than air; this could be an interesting material for making commercial bulk transport hydrofoils

Re:Density calculation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Water is also so dense that steel works just great at making things float. So well that ships not laden with cargo have to fill themselves with water as ballast to keep enough of themselves in the water to be stable. As far as hydrofoils, I don't think they work the way you seem to think they work.

Re:Density calculation?

[michelcolman]

Aviation gas is kept isolated from the air? I don't suppose you visit airfields much?

And as for helium balloons being safe... Nah, too easy, I'm not even going to go there.

Re:Density calculation?

[michelcolman]

And as for helium balloons being safe... Nah, too easy, I'm not even going to go there.

I meant hydrogen, obviously :-)

Re:Density calculation?

[Anonymous Coward]

The force that it needs to withstand is proportional to the surface area, while the buoyancy force that propels it upwards is proportional to volume. Therefore, for any given material that you make the walls of, there is a size for which a cube "filled" with vacuum that's going to float in air.

Re:Density calculation?

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Good luck convincing anyone that airships are safe.
FTFY
Most people don't care about why it is now safe, they just remember "Oh the Humanity"

Re:Density calculation?

[dublin]

Yeah, but to do that, you need really big carbon atoms, and they're still hard to build... ;-)

Re:Density calculation?

[mapsjanhere]

Of course, the fact that extremely high surface area carbon and hydrogen gas might have lead to methane formation long before you get to light it is a completely different issue.

Re:Density calculation?

[amorsen]

People get in hot air balloons all the time, despite their rather dismal safety record. Hot air is not viable for airships.

There are currently three possible lift gases for airships: hydrogen, helium, and water vapour. Hydrogen is out for safety reasons, helium will be too expensive, and steam is difficult because the airship has to be really large to avoid too much heat loss.

Re:Density calculation?

[nedlohs]

Which is why I said "large enough to be useful" since that restricts both the minimum and maximum size to what it practical for an airship (or whatever) - well it really just restricts the maximum, you can just use multiple copies of something "too small"...

Though you are wrong anyway, since you can't make a self supporting structure of arbitrary size out of any given material (let alone one also having to handle the pressure in this scenario) so there's a limit there which could very well be smaller than the minimum sized cube (or more likely sphere).

Aerogel vs. M&Ms

[T-Bone-T]

I still remember the first time I learned about aerogel. The picture had a column of Aerogel about the size of a double-height coke can on one side of a balance and 3 M&Ms on the other side that weighed more.

Re:Aerogel vs. M&Ms

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The insulative properties are also pretty dramatic. There is another picture floating around with some crayons in place of the flower. That little stunt might not work as well with carbon aerogels as it does with silica ones, though...

Re:Aerogel vs. M&Ms

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not graphene aerogel, however. Are the thermal properties of all aerogels are the same? I'd be surprised.

Re:Aerogel vs. M&Ms

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given that all aerogels are extremely tenuous foams, I would strongly suspect that all of them are pretty good insulators(even if one were made of a very good conductor of heat, like silver, there is just so little solid and so much trapped-gas-pocket that good insulation is to be suspected). However, if the aerogel is made of a material that burns in oxygen, the same combination of a tiny amount of solid with plenty of gas probably results in a very swift burn once you get it started.

I'd suspect that a carbon aerogel would be only slightly worse as an insulator than a silica one; but I wouldn't try taking a blowtorch to it(except to see what happens...)

Re:Aerogel vs. M&Ms

[Joce640k]

It's more impressive when you do it the other way around: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Aerogelbrick.jpg/568px-Aerogelbrick.jpg

Re:Aerogel vs. M&Ms

[Anonymous Coward]

In the Glorious One Party China, space shuttles don't need any propellant in the lower atmosphere.

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:Enter the new airship age ...

[tom17]

Because cutting edge materials never get cheaper when a valid use is found for them and they start getting produced on industrial, economical scales.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[fnj]

So how strong is the aerogel?

Probably about 1/1000 as strong as it would have to be to withstand atmospheric pressure. That's *IF* you could remove all the encapsulated air, which of course you couldn't.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[fnj]

You still have the weather issues that make airships impractical.

I'm sure all the operators who fly airships daily would be interested to hear why you think it's impractical to do what they are doing.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that they already know, and don't care why it's impractical. After all, if it was practical, they'd be more common than airplanes, which they are not.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[h4rr4r]

Which ones are those?

All the ones I know of are used only for advertising and pleasure cruising due to these limitations.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[chainsaw1]

That's *IF* you could remove all the encapsulated air, which of course you couldn't

I believe this is quite possible following the aerogel production process. Once the supercritical compound is "drained" out it, the aerogel would basically be at vacuum.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Aerogel is made via supercritical drying. If it was impossible to remove the encapsulated air, then aerogel could not exist.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[Dan East]

You know those storage bags that you suck the air out of with a vacuum so they take up less space? Imagine putting a sponge in one, and sucking out all the air. It would end up flat as a pancake, which is probably the same way a bag of areogel would look under those conditions.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[idji]

Just make a bag and remove the air for an airship. I don't see this aerogel contributing to either vacuum or bag stability.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[way2trivial]

And horatio, there are more things on heaven and earth, than you- I- or any one man will ever think of
the best you can hope to do, is appreciate a reasonable smidgeon of one percent

Humans are endlessly variable, and there are a lot of us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT

"The Zeppelin NT ("Neue Technologie", German for new technology) is a class of helium-filled airships being manufactured since the 1990s by the German company Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH (ZLT) in Friedrichshafen.[1] The initial model is the NT07. The company considers itself the successor of the companies founded by Ferdinand von Zeppelin which constructed and operated the very successful Zeppelin airships in the first third of the 20th century. There are, however, a number of notable differences between the Zeppelin NT and the airships of those days, as well as between the Zeppelin NT and usual non-rigid airships known as blimps. The Zeppelin NT is classified as a semi-rigid airship.[2]"

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The weather issues are less of a problem with RADAR, modern engineering, and a flight envelope that is properly aerodynamically modeled vs a fat cigar.

Also, you do realize that in terms of air lift capablity, hidenberg dwarfed even the biggest Antanov transport jet. and it did it with 1930s engine and lift technology.

airships aren't meant to be fast, they are meant to be the bulk cargo of the aerospace world.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The second problem is actually the main problem, IMHO. It is not like this kind of lifting agent is going to leak out if the hull is damaged by bad weather, or expand uncontrollably if ship ascends too abruptly.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[X0563511]

... except a sponge is not a rigid structure, unlike aerogel.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[ace37]

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.

As an ultralight foam, it has strength, but very little. You can order aerogel samples online - I did a year or two ago (glass aerogel, not graphene). It's extremely brittle and has almost no impact strength, but it has sufficient strength to be made useful. You could conceivably do what you suggest and create a bag of it, then isolate it from the exterior surface or any surface that might see impact damage. It could certainly be made to work if you had enough time, money, and talented minds.

The problem is, if airships using He aren't cost-effective today, it's looks unlikely that making airships of graphene aerogel (or any other type of aerogel) will be cost effective for many decades. As a scientific curiosity, aerogel does have a higher-than-typical chance of benefiting from a game-changing technological development, so hopefully that will be proven wrong.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[TheRaven64]

From your article, two salient points:

1. Number built : 4 (since 1997. Not exactly in widespread use then)
2. Capacity: 12 passengers or 1,900 kg (So, only used for advertising and pleasure cruises, as the grandparent said).

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[h4rr4r]

Those are only for advertising and pleasure cruises.

This is because of the inherent stability issues that lighter than air craft all face.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[rmstar]

airships aren't meant to be fast, they are meant to be the bulk cargo of the aerospace world.

In a world without wind - perhaps. Not in this one, though.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[delt0r]

Going to vacuum from either He or H gives very little extra lift. Air at STP is just a little over 1.1kg/m3, while H2 is about 100g and He is about 200g. So you get about 1kg of lift per m3. With vacuum you get, well about 1kg per m3.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Archer has all the answers to your questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq-N3_plNq8

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[ShanghaiBill]

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

Using a vacuum gives you little additional buoyancy. Air has a density of about 1.2 kg/m^3. Hydrogen has a density of about 0.09 kg/m^3. So a cubic meter of vacuum has a buoyancy of 1.2 kg/m^3, and a cubic meter of H has a buoyancy of 1.11 kg/m^3. So a vacuum will only give you about 8% more lift than using hydrogen, and about 16% more than using helium. The expense and hassle of maintaining a vacuum is unlikely to be worth the gain.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[Anonymous Coward]

May be lining it inside conventional hot air balloons would help? The advantage is that you don't have to structural aspect of vacuum or leakage of hydrogen/helium.
It would take less fuel to maintain the hot air given the heat insulating properties and that might make it more economical.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[nedlohs]

When something is described as "extremely elastic, bouncing back after being compressed" then it's unlikely to be all that rigid...

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[X0563511]

I am (perhaps incorrectly) under the assumption that aerogels are rigid.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure how well it will work with this particular material. The article says it's elastic, and will re-expand after being compressed. I imagine covering it with a membrane and sucking out all the air will just compress it, much like putting a sponge in a bag and then vacuum-sealing the air out of it. Regular aerogel is rigid, but horrendously fragile, so odds are it wouldn't take the pressure.

You'd probably have to have a ridiculously massive enough amount of graphene aerogel, to account for having to build a latticework of some kind of rigid structure around it to support the membrane without compressing the entire thing.

That said, I imagine if you make it insanely giant enough, it'd be possible.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[quantaman]

I'm pretty sure that they already know, and don't care why it's impractical. After all, if it was practical, they'd be more common than airplanes, which they are not.

Well the cost of helium, and the explosiveness of hydrogen, are pretty good reasons why they're impractical. If graphene aerogel could remove these issues than the question is if there's additional impracticalities.

My guess would be weather (having that large a profile makes it too hard to stay on course with wind), carrying capacity, and speed.

Re:Enter the new airship age ...

[maxwell demon]

Well, then why didn't the Cargolifter succeed?

What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Muad'Dave]

Obviously not 'lightest', but 'least dense'. Sheesh, editors - do your JOB! The /. title should be "Silly folk at Gizmag confuse mass with density when describing world's least dense solid.'

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Forty Two Tenfold]

Obviously the editors are not the least dense.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is the lightest which is measured in density (mass per area of volume).

No, it won't float, even though it is less dense than helium, because in order to float, an object must displace the material with the higher density (like a boat hull displaces water). Since this material is porous, the air is mostly not displaced, but rather fills up the empty space inside the material. Only a tiny fraction of the air is displaced where the structure of the material itself resides. Since, very little air is displaced, the material is just another boat anchor and sinks. This is just (as others have noted) like a sponge. A dry sponge floats on water. But if you saturate the sponge with water, it sinks.

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?

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Muad'Dave]

The absolute terms 'light' and 'heavy' are not shorthand for relative terms relating to density. If you don't include the volume of a substance when describing something as 'light' or 'heavy', you can't beat a single neutrino - it's possibly the 'lightest*' substance in absolute terms of only mass. 'Light' and 'low density' are not the same thing. Notice that mass (g) and density (g/cm^3) don NOT depend on gravity, only mass and volume. Sintered depleted uranium is (relatively) low density, but very heavy.

Another nit to pick with this substance - I assume its porous nature allows for air to exist inside it - should that be counted as part of its weight? If this substance were really less dense than air (which is what they claim with their numbers - 0.16 mg/cm^3 vs 1.275 mg/cm^3 for air) it should float in air (and helium, for that matter) like a helium-filled balloon.

*with measurable mass and volume. I suppose photons beat that.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[dpilot]

Which makes me think...

It might not be appropriate to consider aerogels "solid" in the "3D solid" sense. It might be better to consider aerogels to be a real and physical example of a "factal solid," and I wouldn't care to attempt to assign the fractional dimensionality to such a thing. But aerogels seem to have the essential characteristics of the "space-filling" shapes described in fractal literature.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that *neither* of the terms 'light' or 'heavy' are absolute terms in any meaning, I think we can all feel free to ignore your nitpicking.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[ChrisMaple]

Aerogels should be considered structures, like a house.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Ed Avis]

Sorry what? 'Light' and 'heavy' can be used as relative terms, just like big and small, hot and cold, or pretty much any adjective in English. If you say 'the lightest substance', it's quite clear that you are talking in relative terms. Also I think you are confusing 'substance' and 'object' - a single neutrino is not a substance, it is an object. Water is a substance; a drop of water is an object. I mentioned gravity to deflect any possible nitpick about 'heavy' being different depending on what gravity you measure it in - since we normally understand heaviness as the force of an object being pulled towards the ground, in other words as a measure of weight rather than mass.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[dkf]

Obviously not 'lightest', but 'least dense'.

You've just got to apply a correction factor. Ask yourself whether it is the lightest material per kilogram...

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

The aerogels I've seen studies of are very much not fractal in nature. The pore structure and sizes is rather consistent and fall all within a factor of two or so of the average size. It has a definitive scale size, and is not self-similar on other scales.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is pretty obvious when someone is referring to a specific property of a material (e.g. per mass, or per volume) versus when talking about the property of a given object made of that material. The rather vague terms "heavy" and "light" are used even in technical situations when the context makes it clear what they are referring to, including for density when reference a material and not an object.

Also, densities of aerogels typically exclude the mass of air, because they are an open celled foam that can be filled with anything or evacuated to a vacuum. Complaining they don't include the mass of the air outside of a specific situation is the same as complaining that the spec sheet on a material used to make balloons doesn't include the mass inside the balloon in the density, or that the mass of a sponge is given as the dry mass instead of saturated mass.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Muad'Dave]

Lightest per kilogram? A have a feather and a gold brick that are both exactly 1kg/kg.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Muad'Dave]

I think you've got it backwards. As you say words in English that end in -er are relative - they have no use without comparing things. Words like big and small, hot and cold are relative as well, but the comparison is usually implied. ("That dog is big" [as compared to other dogs]). Words that end in -est are absolutes - "That is the tallest dog", meaning there is no other dog that is taller.

Also I think you are confusing 'substance' and 'object' - a single neutrino is not a substance, it is an object. Water is a substance; a drop of water is an object.

I would argue that a neutrino is both a substance and an object, exactly the same as an molecule of water.
Water is water. Water is the abstract is a chemical compound with certain properties; a drop of water is a particular amount of that substance. That's my point - water itself can neither be light or heavy, but it can have a specific density. A Certain amount can be light or heavy.

I've had enough nit-picking for the day. Let's just agree to disagree.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

That kilo of feathers would be slightly more buoyant on the surface of the Earth though, and would show up lighter on a really accurate scale while they would both show the same on a balance in vacuum.

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[guardian-ct]

I'm sorry, but your joke is too subtle to be modded "Funny". Please try again next week!

Re:What ever happened to precision of speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have to contribute that due to 'lightest' being typically used for weight, not mass, you should amend your comment to "Silly folk at Gizmag confuse weight with density when describing world's least dense solid."

I apologize for further driving us down the nit-picking road.

Density

[Phanatic1a]

" 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."

Picture in the article shows a chunk of the stuff being supported by a blade of grass. If the density's lower than that of helium, why isn't it floating away instead of sitting there like a thing that's denser than the atmosphere around it?

Re:Density

[RichMan]

The density is measured including its interior space. In reality the interior space is filled with air and its realtive weight is the carbon structure alone.
To make it float you would have to find a way to seal off the interior structure and remove the air from that.

Re:Density

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's an open cell foam.
Stick it in a vacuum apply an outer surface and then bring it back into atmosphere you'll have a solid balloon.

Re:Density

[Anonymous Coward]

Could have taken the picture in a vacuum?

Re:Density

[Joce640k]

If the density's lower than that of helium, why isn't it floating away

Bad journalism ...

being repeated verbatim by an idiot slashdot submitters

then not being deleted by idiot slashdot editors

then being voted up in the firehose by equally stupid readers.

On a "tech" site, with three separate links in the editorial chain, you'd think that it would have been spotted, but nooooooo.

Re:Density

[Nemosoft Unv.]

Because the atmosphere that surrounds it is also inside the gel, between the pores. That still makes it heavier than air, by aforementioned 0.16mg/cm3. A saturated sponge will also sink, despite being 'lighter' than water.

Re:Density

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Because the material is extremely porous, and is saturated with ambient air.

In a vacuum, the material should float.

Re:Density

[Anonymous Coward]

because it still contains the room air in its pores, if that was removed it would float.

Re:Density

[bill_mcgonigle]

In a vacuum, the material should float.

What would it be displacing in a vacuum? Paging @Archimedes.

Re:Density

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Just to clarify, you would need to seal the outer surface, and pull a vacuum on the internal volume of the material. Then, assuming that the sealing coating didn't weigh too much, the stuff should float.

Re:Density

[Anonymous Coward]

In vacuum, the amount of volume it displaces would have no weight, so it won't float either.

Re:Density

[tom17]

Why would it float in a vacuum?

Now that *WOULD* be magically ground breaking tech ;)

Re:Density

[Anonymous Coward]

>In a vacuum, the material should float.
Only if the volume it displaces has MORE weight... There is no air nor anything in vacuum, so it sinks.

Re:Density

[scorp1us]

Yay, you finally said it right!

I am just imagining (like everyone else) 3D printers of this stuff that create rigid blimp sections which are assembled (interlocking) and provide a permanent no-gas lighter-than-air rigid support structure. You only need to maintain vacuum, which is far more easy and desirable than having to lug a fixed amount of compressed buoyant gas around.

Re:Density

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] permanent no-gas lighter-than-air rigid support structure. You only need to maintain vacuum, which is far more easy and desirable than having to lug a fixed amount of compressed buoyant gas around.

Ah, yes, the fabled vacuum balloon.

Considering one of these things are done routinely, and the other haven't been done at all, you may want to reconsider which one is easier.

Restated as a slightly simpler experiment, you'd want a container that could maintain its shape with air inside under 10 metres of water, that also weighed less than 1.1 kg per m3 of displaced volume.

TFA describes the aerogel as elastic and spongy, which doesn't sound much good for supporting a structrue.

Re:Density

[Anonymous Coward]

The stuff is obviously very porous, but is it permeable? Is the air trapped due to formation at STP? If so, could you construct an aerographine matrix at low pressure and use it to finally create flying cars?

Re:Density

[multi io]

The density is measured including its interior space. In reality the interior space is filled with air and its realtive weight is the carbon structure alone. To make it float you would have to find a way to seal off the interior structure and remove the air from that.

I don't understand that. If the inner air "cavities" are connected to the outside and thus have the outside air's vertical pressure gradient, they should exert the same buoyant force / upward "lift" on the carbon structure, or not?

Re:Density

[maxwell demon]

Dark matter? <ducks>

Re:Density

[Ginger Unicorn]

I think the inner air cavities are being included as part of the volume in the density calculation, but the mass of the air in them is not, which is misleading.

Re:Density

[multi io]

I think the inner air cavities are being included as part of the volume in the density calculation, but the mass of the air in them is not, which is misleading.

My point was that if the cavities are connected to the outside, and the density of the carbon structure (without the air) is less than that of helium (which I find very hard to believe indeed), then the whole thing should rise and fly due to its buoyancy.

Molecular Sieve?

[Mente]

If the substance's density could be altered, it would be possible to have one membrane of gel that was more dense than helium and hydrogen, but less dense than every other element. Then have this gel, which is less dense than helium and more dense than hydrogen. Helium and Hydrogen would flow through the first membrane leaving everything else behind, and then only Hydrogen would pass though the second membrane leaving only helium trapped in between. Given the state of the world's current Helium reserves, this might be a very handy technology.

Re:Molecular Sieve?

[h4rr4r]

Will helium readily flow through it?
Its density does not mean it is not too porous to prevent everything else from flowing through, or tight enough to significantly restrict the flow of the gasses you want.

Re:Molecular Sieve?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it deflect the solar wind?
If it can, then it has the necessary density to build statites.

That technology scaled to insane sizes can create a Dyson sphere and harness the total output of the sun.

where did all the

[Anonymous Coward]

anti-China bashers go? the ones who keep saying China is a copycat while they weren't born in the70's and 80's when Japan was doing the exact same thing.

Re:where did all the

[ArcadeMan]

Where did all the anti-China bashers go?

They're all away, buying low-cost items at the dollar store.

Re:where did all the

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't at the store, they are out trying to find jobs that have been taken by our globalist masters and shipped around the world.
But, will the Chinese, after the exposure of their agent in was it DC, have the advantage of all our research, since it was taken offline. How will the space program fair now, when they have all the heavy lift capabilities, that we have forgotten. Thank regan for his wisdom. Thank Nixon for his selling your future down the river for his 30 pieces of silver.
But this aerogel does look like neat stuff. Too bad its not more rigid. As in structural. Where you could create an object, use aerogel as an insulator, or a filter, to process other materials. Such as you need Hydrogen in a tank, there are supplies that could be magnetically funneled to a "scoop", use that scoop to direct the hydrogen to a burning/exhaust system, to produce thrust. Maybe an idea for china. Since they produce the gel, they produce magnets, They produce or buy copper/gold for wiring, can read our old nasa documents, americans cannot any more. And they showed how it could be done, I believe it was about 15 years ago.

how is it made?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it made? The problem with the previous aerogel was it was rather expensive to make. It was also fairly fragile. So its applications for insulation made it a pain as it took lots of extra prep to make it is decent insulator. Is this any different? What sort of structural integrity does it have? Being light and probably a lattice which can 'absorb oil spills' I suspect not very good.

Insulating a house with this sort of thing would be amazing. However, the cost is also quite amazing. For example a guy I know built a house recently. It was cheaper to make the walls 1 inch thicker and stack up rigid foam with blown in insulation than to use some of these newer materials for the same R level.

Re:how is it made?

[c0lo]

How is it made?

Freeze-casting: take the material, form a gel with a solvent that has a triple point, freeze the gel, sublimate the solvent.

Graphene oxide is hydrophilic, one may try it at home using water. Use a jewelry ultrasonic cleaner to form the gel and your freezer for freeze-drying the gel. As it may take a while to have all the water sublimating, perhaps trying to freeze-cast it as band rather than a bulky form may help. Note: I didn't try it myself (yet)

Carbon is awesome

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Can be used to make the hardest or lightest stuff on the planet.

Carbon's reputation is however spoiled by a couple of Oxygen a-holes that like to latch on to it, stupid no good Oxygen.

Re:Carbon is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor Carbon is just prone to bad influence when in a mixed company. With hydrogen it just smells bad, but with potassium and nitrogen - outright poisonous. This is why good Carbon should spend all its time with a family and never go out alone.

Re:Carbon is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Carbon's reputation is however spoiled by a couple of Oxygen a-holes that like to latch on to it, stupid no good Oxygen.

Obviously. Don't forget the evil dihydrogen monoxide has oxygen in it. We should start our quest to ban oxygen by banning dihydrogen monoxide.

Re:Carbon is awesome

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy AC,

i can't stand it! i hafta post this link ...
Facts About Dihydrogen Monoxide
- http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

the idea that there are actually _several_ such sites adds to the giggle factor. [*grin*]

take care,
lee

OK, explain this to me, someone...

[Simon Brooke]

This stuff is lighter than helium (presumably at standard pressure and temperature) and yet not buoyant in air. That presumably means it's air-permeable in much the same way that a cellulose sponge is water permeable? In that case, in what sense is it lighter than helium? If you enclosed a volume of this stuff in a gas-tight membrane it would presumably be buoyant in air, but that - it seems to me - would surely be because vacuum is lighter than air?

Re:OK, explain this to me, someone...

[Ironhandx]

Yes. Depending on the actual strength and other factors you may be able to make it lighter than air by sealing it into an air-tight membrane of some sort and removing all of the air. If it retains its structure it would then be lighter than air.

Brief Kings

[lymond01]

Graphene Aerogel Takes World's Lightest Material Crown

A crown should weigh heavy on a ruler's brow, lest he forget the weight of his responsibility.

I don't quite get it

[wonkey_monkey]

What makes this so different from, say, creating a hollow cube with some very fine polymer for the vertices, with the faces and interior remaining empty? If something's full of holes, is its density still measurable in a meaningful way? A battleship is less dense than water in this sense, but the material it's made from isn't.

Re:I don't quite get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if you were to slice it in half, this graphene aerogel would be the exact same density and consistency all the way through, at every single molecular point inside of it. With your battleship, it tends to have a big, empty spot in the middle, instead of being just a giant block of steel. Just like how anyone on earth would consider ice to be a solid, the fact that it's formed in a structure (not sure if this graphene is considered a crystalline structure, but you get the idea) makes ice ligher than water, and makes this graphene aerogel lighter than other solids. And most gases (at 1 atmosphere of pressure, since it'd be rather pointless to compare in the upper atmosphere for example).

Think of it in that all of the atoms are X distance apart from eachother. With say... a diamond (assuming perfect crystalline structure), all of the atoms will be Y distance apart. Y will just be a helluva lot less than X. But with both, if you cut it in half, you're still going to get a consistant density throughout.

There's probably a lot I'm missing, and possibly a lot I'm a bit off on, but in general this should give you the gist of it. It's uniform throughout the material, that's the main point.

Re:I don't quite get it

[slimjim8094]

What defines solid? There's lots of things that are "solid" but filled with holes; think pumice or a brick. Molecules are mostly empty space, as are atoms themselves. It's not necessarily any sillier to think of aerogel as being solid than it is to think of pumice being solid. If you want to draw the line, it's always going to be arbitrary

Re:I don't quite get it

[Flere Imsaho]

And how do you make one dimensional graphene fibres?

Re:I don't quite get it

[c0lo]

Because if you were to slice it in half, this graphene aerogel would be the exact same density and consistency all the way through, at every single molecular point inside of it.

I really doubt it, otherwise it would not be a gel, it would be a solution or a cristal (definition of a gel implies: have porous inner surface to trap the liquid)

Transparent aluminum?

[RogueWarrior65]

But it will take years to figure out the dynamics of this matrix.

Dumb question?

[argStyopa]

Here's my stupid question: if it's less dense than helium, and about 1/10 that of nitrogen (1.6 mg/cm3)...why is it pictured *sitting* on anything? Why doesn't it float away?

If, as I suspect, it's porous and it's being measured as 'less dense' than He only because they are taking the actual mass/OUTER VOLUME...well, that's not actual density is it? If so, then by this method my portable dog kennel (made of STEEL) is only an order of magnitude more dense than oxygen.

Re:Dumb question?

[slimjim8094]

It doesn't float away because it's filled with air. If it were filled with nothing (i.e., a vacuum) it should float away.

It's very reasonable to think about the overall density of something. Think about a boat - a boat floats because it is overall less dense than water it displaces.

Re:Dumb question?

[argStyopa]

Read my post.

Steel, cement, etc. - more dense than water - can be made into a shape that floats by GEOMETRY. The shape forces aside a mass of water that exceeds the mass of the steel.

But if you form an open structure like a cage, the steel immediately sinks, because the only water displaced is the actual volume of the steel.

If you form a cage out of wood, however, it will STILL FLOAT. (Because wood is intrinsically less dense than water - the mass of the volume of water pushed aside exceeds the mass of the wood, ergo it would float.)

This does NOT float up in air, therefore, the substance ITSELF is more dense than air. They are simply calculating 'density' by taking the mass divided by the outside dimensions...by that measure, my steel dog cage isn't much more dense than air, either.

Material?

[multi io]

Graphene Aerogel Takes World's Lightest Material Crown

This thing seems to consist mainly of air. Doesn't that stretch the definition of "material" quite a bit? If I create a 10-foot wireframe cube consisting of just 12 thin aluminium stiffeners, and define the whole interior of the thing as part of the "material", that's gonna have a pretty low density too.

Or saturate with oxygen

[Anonymous Coward]

Since graphene is carbon and hence burns in oxygen, it might be interesting to saturate the matrix with oxygen instead of hydrogen.

It would then probably burn very nicely when ignited, the combustion spreading into the volume quite quickly from the surface. And if a detonator is used to shatter the fragile graphene then the mix would quite likely explode like a well-dispersed fuel-air bomb.

"density" .... really?

[Mozai]

I can change the density of hydrogen or helium by heating it up, or compressing it.
If I wanted hydrogen to be less dense than whatever aerogel, I just need to move the hydrogen to a bigger bottle.

Quotation marks

[kramer2718]

The convention in the United States for decades has been to places periods inside the quotation marks. All others are based on the actual quote. The Chicago Manual of Style, as one of many, recommends this, but most guides point out that the British style placing anything not part of the quote outside of the quotation marks is acceptable but may be seen as unusual to American readers--of all ages.

Although putting periods inside quotation marks is recommended by various manuals of style and others recommend putting them outside, I believe that both approaches are misguided

Clarity should be the primary concern in language. Quotation marks are used to indicate that the current passage is repeating something verbatim from another source. It is most accurate to include punctuation inside quotation marks if that punctuation is repeated verbatim. In that case, they are punctuating the original. If they are not from the original source, they should be used outside.

Re:Quotation marks

[nobodie]

" I believe that both approaches are misguided."

Well Dr Chomsky, your belief is quite interesting, but still does not reflect common practice and accepted style. I am afraid, therefore, that your belief does not really matter in this instance, but thank you for sharing!

An airship that can sink

[erice]

The second problem is actually the main problem, IMHO. It is not like this kind of lifting agent is going to leak out if the hull is damaged by bad weather, or expand uncontrollably if ship ascends too abruptly.

The hull is damaged, air might leak in and make the structure heavier. The is short of design makes airship rather similar to ships and submarines that move through water. In the event of damage the worry isn't that the contained material (air in the case of ships and submarines) will leak out. The problems is that the outside material (water in the case of ships/submarines, air in the case of a aerogel filled airships) will leak in.

14 psi

[wurp]

You are also assuming that the outside air pressure wouldn't crush it down to a density that would make it sink.

I would be really surprised if you could just evacuate the stuff and make it float. Some day we'll use evacuated carbon nanostructures for lighter than air, but I don't think we're there yet.

"eat healthy"

[tepples]

This is why they say someone who eats a healthy diet "eats healthy" instead of "eats healthily".

"I like to eat Italian." => "I like to eat Italian food."
"I like to eat healthy." => "I like to eat healthy food."

So could you please clarify your claim that "to eat healthy" is not valid English?

Re:"eat healthy"

[AJWM]

Both original sentences are missing a subject; the adjective dangles.

The correct form of the second sentence (using "healthily") has already been pointed out (presumably, nobody wants to eat diseased food). The correct form of the first sentence would be "I like to eat Italians."

Re:"eat healthy"

[cygnwolf]

Except, that the english language does allow for this. It's called using an Adjunctival Noun, or an adjective used as a noun. There's even a Wiki Page for it

Re:"eat healthy"

[Anonymous Coward]

Both of the original sentences have a subject, "I." What you think they are missing is the object, because eat is being used as a transitive verb in those cases. As the other reply points out thought, adjectival nouns are part of English, and have been there for hundreds of years.

Re:"eat healthy"

[nobodie]

While I am just an unskilled and untaught linguist, with only a Master's in the subject, my interest in the topic of "elision" bears on this subject. English has a stupendous number of rules that allow us to use elision in spoken language. I notice that your examples include quotation marks, which could very well indicate that these are examples of spoken sentences as opposed to written discourse. Because of the extensive use of elision in spoken English (say: "you gonna hafta getta new car Ted, that ones dead." and then parse the grammar without elision rules to give yourself a headache: with elision rules it is a perfectly sensible sentence.) the elision of the noun "food" is common when the listener and the speaker are both cognizant of the object. So the word "food" is merely unspoken, although known to both parties.

Now, if this were academic writing, no, it is wrong. Now because of elision rules, but because the standard of clarity is higher in academic writing and it is not, necessarily clear from the context (see below for more on this).

Now, if this were a novel, it might be acceptable if the context made it clear that we were privy to both the topic of the object (food) and the writer's/speaker's intentions at the moment of speaking.

Finally, because in general people eat food, it can easily be argued that fulfilling the requirement of understanding the object by both listener and speaker is easy in all cases because of the verb and therefore we could use elision no matter what. The standards of academic writing, however, step in and overpower the argument by pointing out that your definition of food (insects? uncooked beef or fish? pork? shellfish? raw habaneros?) or other edibles (shit, dirt, leather, the fat, bark from Korean trees) might not make it clear that you were actually advocating a particular food for lunch.

This horse is now completely beaten deep into the earth, let it go, let it go.

get back to me

[Anonymous Coward]

when you have a bicycle frame made of it