New Super-Black Material Absorbs 99 Percent of All Light That Dares to Strike It

what, no picture? also, I'm thinking this could be used to improve current solar panels.

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why learn from your own mistakes, when you could learn from the mistakes of others?
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” -Albert Ein

just like a Black Hole. maybe now we can create our own black hole

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The people of the world only divide into two kinds, One sort with brains who hold no religion, The other with religion and no brain.

- Abu-al-Ala al-Marri

@JediMindset

Not sure if trolling or...

I wonder how long until this is used to update the aging stealth tech. And if an object in space were coated with this, it would be pretty much invisable unless it passed a light source and we see the disruption. I'm curious how these objects would appear if say a large box of this was made and put outside somewhere, how would we percieve it, with almost no light being reflected for our eyes to pick up on it, interesting.

Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978

"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC

My god, it's full of stars.

I wonder if this can help stealth technology. Doe it also traps and absorbs RF energies?

And as much as it traps and can dissipate heat, could this be an enhancing coating for sterling solar engines in some way?

Could this be applied to wet suits for Navy Seal divers and make them harder to see as the cover water and land at night?

@JediMindset

No. No black hole. Black holes have intense gravitational and magnetic fields capable of significantly distorting the fabric of spacetime. Just metamaterial.

Could be great for stealth concepts too. The ability to not absorb heat, and appear as a cold object, along with the ability to deter the reflection or reception of radio signals. Something truly invisible on the radar.

I want to paint my car with this.

Anyone here got some knowledge? Using this to make Infrared Stealth is plain impossible. It absorbs 99% light, hence it heats up really fast and starts to radiate its own Infrared Light(Heat) and far stronger too!

i wonder that sometimes myself..gotta love nano-tubes. cheers

Super Black is gona be so in next year in fashion

Technically, it still emits blackbody radiation (the same thing which makes a hot poker glow red), so its not pure black... just hardly anything reflects off of it-- light is still emitted.

Nana! Nana! Nana! Dark Man!!!!

With his super power of absorbing energies from his enemies he will protect Earth!
Let’s go interview the famous Super Hero Dark Man now!

Hey, A- a? Where did he go?
Well, I know he’s not hanging around the Green Lantern.
They are so totally incompatible.

This wouldn't help with stelth technologies, even without the heat it would radiate, it would just appear as a black silhouette against the sky, even easier to notice than a cloud.

@NoConsequenc3, I don't think it was ment to be in the first place. This research however has been in some projects for awhile. I can definetly think of one good use for this, lowering entropy on the inside of a containers surface to study energy conservation or the electron. Imagine wanting to chill something down, study it with light to observe it, any given off light particles wouldn't be absorbed by the container, which would increase the temperature a bit at the nanoscale if it were. It'll be one step closer to fine tuning our instruments to achieve zero point energy or see whats inside those pesky little fuzzy atoms.

" Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein

Similar material used for the quasi Dyson Sphere planet mentioned in Pop Sci's recent article: "Blackest Planet Ever Found, Absorbs Nearly 100% of Light That Reaches It"?

Of course collecting the light radiation and turning it into usable energy is something different. Still, if someone is sufficiently advanced enough to create a larger than Jupiter sphere - I'm pretty sure turning almost all of the radiation into energy is not terribly difficult (by comparison).

@pheonix1012

but what if we combined this new discovery with the particle accelerator. maybe we could have ourselves our own star gate.

_________________
The people of the world only divide into two kinds, One sort with brains who hold no religion, The other with religion and no brain.

- Abu-al-Ala al-Marri

I adore the dark. ;)

The real question is, does it stay black after 10 washes~ lawl.

bdotalex,
Your icon, picture is extremely hard to figure out. I do not get it.

But you comment is kind of funny. What is ~lawl?
I never saw that before.

I do not wish to be annoying ot you. I just suggest a better icon and I just do not understand lawl.

Oh cool, the ultimate deep-space cloaking material.

@Robot: Lawl is a corruption of the term lol, or Laugh Out Loud.

The have been working on Invisibly for a long time and have only made the detection of the object Invisible not they way we see it by surrounding it with certain material.

@-my name here- That was what I was think not only that but we would be able to take our rovers to the outer edge of our galaxy, although slowly but efficiently. I think?

@CodeZero - haha that's what I want to know as well. Hopefully we can find out more on this with Pics to see if we see it or not. Although it wouldn't be the same as looking at it if it was truly Invisible.

@robot: bdotalex's icon is from the anime Macross Frontier. On topic; can they make a solar panel with this stuff?

Why is something black? Because it absorbs energy at roughly the same rate it dissipates energy, like the previous comments noted. So if you wanted to be visibly invisible ( for lack of a better term ), this might work. But as far as any other sort of detection methods, such as infrared, you would stick out like a sore thumb.

Reading the commentary here is getting more painful by the day... No offense intended, but the questions here on the recent articles are on par with those I used to receive giving 5th graders tours of a university research lab (which is of course forgivable at that age), devoid of a reasonable union of new ideas (this material for instance) and reasonable understanding of everyday physical phenomena.

The object will not be invisible... 'invisible' implies that the object would not obstruct the view of other visible objects. Even if this absorbed 100% of incoming light hitting it, it would still obstruct light emitted by other objects, and would be visible as such.

It also feels like there are a few dozen clones of BubbaGump in circulation.

@elgsus

You are close, but not quite correct. Something that is black merely absorbs most of the electromagnetic radiation on the visible spectrum (what we humans can see). This black body absorbs nearly all electromagnetic radiation that hits it. That absorbed energy is converted to heat which is then radiated in the infrared spectrum.

@iambronco
I couldn't agree more.

@Star_child1
That was meant to be directed towards GeeWillikers

Black Velvet artists are drooling and can't wait to use this material for their next painting of Elvis.

I saw this image(link below) and I recalled this article.
This tech could develop into space armor for protection against space radiation.

http://www.popsci.com/science/gallery/2011-11/fashioning-apollo?image=8

I've read this a couple of years ago. What happened?

I'm not really understanding some of the comments about this it say's "absorbs about 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that strikes it." well doesn't that mean only about 1% of ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light is reflected meaning almost invisible to the naked eye right?? I don't know how it can send off infrared if it is absorbed like it say's?? And on the History Channel (I know it TV and you can't believe it all but) there was a episode of Scientist trying to achieve invisibility and the sad that if an object could absorb 100% of ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that it would be invisible to the eye. On top of that they achieved cloaking an object so that its not detected by radiowaves, microwaves, and etc.

@Eric18

This has been explained in the comments already, but I will try to clarify it here.

If an object were to absorb 100% of the electromagnetic radiation that hit it, it would be called a "black body" object. It would get warm from the energy it is absorbing and therefore would emit electromagnetic radiation in the infrared spectrum. Since humans cannot see that spectrum, the object would look black, i.e. NOT invisible.

Here is an example. During twilight, say 20 minutes after the sun sets, if you look at an object on the horizon where the sun set, you will see its silhouette, but you will not be able to see any of the details on the object. You will only see its outline. This is what a "black body" object would look like, even in direct sunlight!

In order to be invisible, the object would have to "redirect" the visible light from behind it to in front of it, and do so without disrupting it. This is not something a black body does because it *absorbs* the electromagnetic radiation (i.e. it does *not* redirect it).

I hope this clarifies things.

@monkeybuttons
Ya it makes more sense now. I had known about the redirecting light and other waves to make things invisible but had thought this would work the same but it clears it up.

So since redirecting light is pretty much the only way, when are they going to do an article on this and the studies for invisibility?? I know I have seen some of this on the History Channel this year....

@Eric18
Part of the problem with redirecting light is when the light exits the material after being redirected it will be out of phase with light that wasn't redirected. For example, two cars are traveling down the freeway, side by side, at 65 mph. One vehicle is allowed to stay on the freeway while the other has to take a slightly longer path before it merges back into the freeway. In the end both cars are back on the freeway, both cars were able to maintain 65 mph, but the car that took the slight detour is now behind the car that was allowed to stay on the freeway.

This is one of many problems with invisibility. The light being redirected would essentially have to do one of three things. 1. Go faster to catch up (not likely). 2. Go around a small object so the phase difference is essentially undetectable (depending on person or machine this could be a broad spectrum). 3. Use some method that I haven't thought of. I suppose you could also do it with quantum entanglement of photons, though I have no idea if/how that might work since it is not in my expertise and I have not actively studied quantum physics.