This Object Has Been Sprayed With the World's Blackest Material, and It's Freaking Us Out

[EC]

Well, we've finally cracked it. Scientists have finally figured out how to paint a portal to another dimension, as prophesied by Loony Tunes' the Roadrunner. Who wants to try driving a (very small) truck right through that gaping void circle?

In all seriousness, what you're looking at isn't actually a portal to another dimension - but it's not Photoshop, either. That really is a physical object that's been sprayed with Vantablack - the blackest material known to science.

If you're not familiar with Vantablack, it was invented by British researchers back in 2014, and soon after, it was declared the darkest material ever produced in the lab, capable of absorbing 99.96 percent of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light.

Since then, the team behind the invention - from Surrey NanoSystems - has upped its blackness, and in early 2016, announced that no spectrometer in the world was powerful enough to measure how much light it absorbs.

"Even running a high power laser pointer across it barely reflects anything back to the viewer," the researchers explain in a YouTube video. "We have never before made a material so 'black' that it can't be picked up on our spectrometers in the infrared."

In order to make this thing more marketable, the team has now released a 'spray-on' form, which isn't quite as black - it only blocks 99.8 percent of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light - but that's enough to make three-dimensional objects appear distinctly two-dimensional.

Just look at this thing, it's legitimately unnerving

More: http://www.sciencealert.com/this-object-has-been-sprayed-with-the-world-s-blackest-pigment-and-it-s-freaking-us-out



If you don't have time to click through - that's a ball, believe it or not.

[Smokin Joe]

I want some!

[Joe Wooten]

Can you imagine painting some clothing with this stuff and go walking around at night???????

[Idaho_Cowboy]

Can you imagine painting some clothing with this stuff and go walking around at night???????

You won't want to wear if it's sunny though. I'll bet that stuff gets hotter than heck on a holiday.

[Cripplecreek]

If it produced electricity from the light it absorbed it would be a big boost to the feasibility of solar power. Still very good if you want to soak up heat from the sun.

[Joe Wooten]

You won't want to wear if it's sunny though. I'll bet that stuff gets hotter than heck on a holiday.

That's why I said at night.......If it does not radiate much infrared, then I bet it will get hot even at night just from bodyheat.

[ShadowAce]

Spray it on all of our stealth tech.

[Cripplecreek]

A much better demo

[Sanguine]

If only it worked on radar guns.

[andy58-in-nh]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46kXH6GGtT0

[r9etb]

"Even running a high power laser pointer across it barely reflects anything back to the viewer," the researchers explain in a YouTube video. "We have never before made a material so 'black' that it can't be picked up on our spectrometers in the infrared."

Hmmmm..... not sure I believe this.  I'd at least expect to see this thing shining like the dickens in the IR due to black body radiation. 

[Sanguine]

You won't want to wear if it's sunny though. I'll bet that stuff gets hotter than heck on a holiday.

Might make a workable solar stove.

[Suppressed]

Hmmmm..... not sure I believe this.  I'd at least expect to see this thing shining like the dickens in the IR due to black body radiation.

Nanosingularities are the wave of the future.

[Smokin Joe]

If it produced electricity from the light it absorbed it would be a big boost to the feasibility of solar power. Still very good if you want to soak up heat from the sun.

Solar water heaters....

[Smokin Joe]

If it produced electricity from the light it absorbed it would be a big boost to the feasibility of solar power. Still very good if you want to soak up heat from the sun.

Something screwy there if it doesn't radiate heat efficiently, too, even if it doesn't reflect it.

[Smokin Joe]

Nanosingularities are the wave of the future.

[Idaho_Cowboy]

Something screwy there if it doesn't radiate heat efficiently, too, even if it doesn't reflect it.

It has to radiate the energy at in some way it can't absorb forever.

[Cripplecreek]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU_ggFovJNo

[LateForLunch]

Nanosingularities are the wave of the future.

hah hah physicists have pretty much dismissed nanosingularities as impossible- because like a thermonuclear core, there has to be a minimum amount of mass present to sustain a chain reaction.

In the case of an atomic weapon core, I think the minimum amount of U235 or plutonium for achieving critical mass in an explosion must be about 19 kilograms. Any less and it won't fission well enough to sustain a true thermonuclear detonation (and becomes merely a dirty bomb instead).

There is no known threshold for a singularity because they have only been observed in deep space by telescope.

The theoretical physics for a true gravity singularity (black hole) seem to exclude anything much smaller than about ten solar masses. The problem is apparently that the gravity must overpower the other fundamental forces of nature and any such collapse of matter would be extinguished (smothered) by the clustering of various forms of matter on the surface which would aggregate and kill the reaction instead being absorbed and sustaining it.

Scientists explored this possibility when doing risk assessments of the Large Hadron Collider, to put fears of some to rest that the collisions of particles would result in nanosingularities that could create a "runaway" reaction.

Back to the original topic, author Gene Wolfe gave a name to the "color that is darker than black". He called it "fuligan" and it was also the color of the cloak of his central character, a state-employed  torturer-by-trade named Severian. 

Wolfe described the appearance of the material to be "more like a hole in space, than a material substance" which is very much like the sphere in the picture at the beginning of the thread.

The problem of course is that anything with such an optically flawless appearance would be subject to getting covered with dust over time ( because most solid objects collect dust, which floats around us all the time, even when we can't see it easily) either by settling on it or by static charge attraction. Soon the surface would no longer be flawless and the
"hole in space" effect would be drastically diminished.

[Ghost Bear]

A much better demo

So... they just happened to have a bronze bust of Lenin sitting around to try it on?

 

[Doug Loss]

Can you imagine painting some clothing with this stuff and go walking around at night???????

I suspect you'd be more observable than if you dressed in very dark blue.  Night time is virtually never completely lightless. 

http://www.chinatownconnection.com/misconception-ninja.htm

[Cripplecreek]

I suspect you'd be more observable than if you dressed in very dark blue.  Night time is virtually never completely lightless. 

http://www.chinatownconnection.com/misconception-ninja.htm

Nothing beats dense fog for real stealth.

[LateForLunch]

Nothing beats dense fog for real stealth.

Of a certainty.

Something like this "fuligan" black would be helpful for military spacecraft or stealth aircraft that fly night missions. But then there is that troublesome element of dirt to mess things up. Color is not the only factor, there must be durability in extreme temperature gradients for aeronautics. 

Not to overstate the obvious, but if nature is any guide, the animals who have the best camouflage using black are panthers (their fur prevents reflectivity and also dampens or eliminates IR so that not even reptiles or other critters with IR sense see them coming easily). Panthers are one of the only large predators which use black for concealment (because they hunt at night or in dense, dark jungle foliage). The blackness only has to be good enough to get them to effectively disappear relative to other objects and background.

Some cobras also use black to conceal them (they are also nocturnal predators).

The most effective day-time camouflage is of course achieved by changing color to match surroundings as reptiles can do.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Nothing beats dense fog for real stealth.

Maybe for visual that works, but for audio fog is a very good communicator that lacks stealth characteristics.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

I want some!

For night-time paintball games?