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Scientists Have Developed a Material So Dark That You Can't See It
gbjbaanb writes A British company is developing a new material that's so black it absorbs all but 0.035 percent of the visual light, making it the darkest material ever created. Of course, apart from making album covers, it conducts heat 7 times better than copper and is 10 times stronger than steel. "The nanotube material, named Vantablack, has been grown on sheets of aluminium foil by the Newhaven-based company. While the sheets may be crumpled into miniature hills and valleys, this landscape disappears on areas covered by it. 'You expect to see the hills and all you can see it's like black, like a hole, like there's nothing there. It just looks so strange,' said Ben Jensen, the firm's chief technical officer.
And I took a photo of the material.
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It's the weird colour scheme that freaks me. Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls, which are labeled in black on a black background, a small black light lights up black to let you know you've done it. Hey, what is this, some kind of galactic hyper-hearse?
And the answer is none. None more black.
I hear a Mr. Hotblack Desiato wants to buy all of it. The material and the team that invented it... He also might buy the whole solar system while he's at it.
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Can't remember if he got them from Acme or not...
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If this stuff where painted around the entrance of a curved tunnel and sun light shone on to it, if you you could only see the painted material then you would most 100% definitively see sunlight shining off of it.
Bright daylight being 10,000 foot candles and 1 candle light being something that we can see, 0.035% = 2,857 to 1 ratio.
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Very funny. Here are the real pictures: (maybe it's not to late to add this link to the article?)
http://sageofquay.blogspot.nl/
I imagine it would also be appropriate for the Batmobile.
It is so happens that in computer graphics 3d object can be flat shaded, as a uniform color. In this case it is impossible to distinquish some characteristics and the object looks unnatural. So I believe I totally understand how the object should look. however we are used to unrealistic stuff in PC screen, however wrong looking objects in real life would be something really interesting.
it'll do a good job on IF/UV too I'm sure given it's based on trapping photons bouncing around within tunnels so they can't escape,
the effects are probably because the size of the nanotubes are on the order of the wavelength of visible light... I would not be surprised if it wasn't particularly impressive for IR/UV. SOURCE: MY BRAIN
If it's absorbing all that light, it's close to being a perfect black body and so it's going to emit infrared radiation.
This is the sort of material which could be used for artificial hearts for lawyers, bankers, and politicians.
Other than that, probably not that significant.
Is it possible that you perhaps haven't considered every single possible application this might have?
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Imagine the surreal experience of opening a door to a room painted floor to ceiling with vantablack and only a small area rug serving as an "island" with a wing chair, ottoman and side table with table lamp floating in space, I can only wonder if you'd get a floating sensation while sitting in the chair.
Another, more cynical part of me suspects that our Government's Intelligence community is already planning on creating such rooms to "enhance" interrogation or make solitary confinement more solitary.
I wonder if this has applications in solar power. If you have 100% of light absorbed, the energy has to go somewhere - presumably it heats up.
This could be really interesting to use in thermal solar panels (in layman terms: the ones for water heating, not the ones to get electricity). If it absorbs so much light, it's probably more efficient than other materials, and surely much more than black paint. This could raise the efficiency of thermal panels to near 95%, so I hope this becomes a thing.
I wouldn't cover a car with it, though. I don't want to experience a solar oven first-hand.
I didn't research so forgive my ignorance
It gets this property from its fine surface structure, which is a forest of tubes. Incoming light has to be reflected many times before it gets back out, so a black material is effectively made even less reflective. It's the optical-scale version of the pointed absorbers used in anechoic chambers.
It probably is not going to retain its blackness when exposed to water, dirt, or wear. Superhydrophobic coatings such as Never Wet have the same problem - they work because they're composed of tiny points, so droplets of liquid don't have a surface they can grab. But after some wear, the effect stops working. (See any of the many "NeverWet fails" videos on YouTube.)
This is likely to be great for protected environments, such as inside optical systems. It should be useful for optical sensors in space, too. But it's probably an inherently fragile surface. That limits its uses. (The "stronger than steel" probably refers to the individual carbon nanotubes, not the bulk material.)
This s a problem with a lot of surface chemistry stuff touted as "nanomaterials". They have interesting surface properties, but the surfaces are fragile, because they're some very thin surface layer with an unusual structure. If you protect that structure with some coating, you lose the effect.
While it might do a good job at absorbing it must still emit blackbody photons.
True, but almost nothing at 300K, and almost none of that in the *near* infra-red.