Scientists Have Developed a Material So Dark That You Can't See It 238
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.
Inside of cameras (Score:2, Interesting)
This is going to be useful for the insides of optical systems, lens hoods, and such. Other than that, probably not that significant.
Paint for a room (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Solar panels (Score:5, Interesting)
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.