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Scientists Turn Gold Into Foam That's Nearly As Light As Air (www.ethz.ch)
Zothecula writes: Along with its use in jewelry, gold also has numerous applications in fields such as electronics and scientific research. It's a handy material, but – of course – it's also expensive. That's why researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a new way of making a small amount of gold go a long way. They've created a gold foam that looks much like solid gold, but is actually 98 parts air and two parts solid material (abstract). As an added bonus, the aerogel-type foam can also be made in non-gold colors such as dark red.
This stuff is very different from Aerogel. I bought some Aerogel on eBay for my daughter's science project. Aerogel is very rigid and fragile. It can fracture just from normal handling. According to TFA, this gold foam is malleable, and can be bent and shaped by hand. That would make it very different from old fashioned Aerogel, and suitable for different applications. Supposedly, Aerographene is also elastic.