
How Birds of Paradise Produce Super-Black Feathers - curtis
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/super-black-is-the-new-black/549869/?single_page=true
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masklinn
That's very interesting, because at 99.95% absorption it has slightly worse
performances than Vantablack (99.96%) but _much better_ performances than
Vantablack S-VIS (99.8%), the "low-temperature"[0] sprayable version.

Furthermore studying BoP structures could provide for _significant_ mechanical
resistance improvements over Vantablack, which has good resistance to
mechanical _vibration_ (no issue putting it on top of a rocket) but pretty
much none to contact/abrasion (Surrey's website clearly states that a
vantablack-coated surface "needs to be protected from accidental touching, for
example behind or inside a component, or situated where contact is avoided"
and that it is "highly susceptible to any direct impact or abrasion").

OTOH the article states that the absorption is very variable with angle but
does not provide any numbers, that would be interesting (according to Surrey
Nanosystems, S-VIS still provides 99.4% absorption at 70˚ VIS, they don't
provide any hard number for Vantablack).

[0] ~100C versus ~450C for the original Vantablack)

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voryzen
I sorta love it when mother nature comes close to or beats man-made things.
Birds of Paradise.. super black... the world is truly amazing.

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jedanbik
Gotta love bionics!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionics)

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nitin_flanker
Really great video by BBC. The little dance that bird does when fending off
other birds is really amusing, the movements and symmetry of wings positions
is something that is an art in itself.

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okayIguessSo
Up until now, I had assumed that BBS Planet Earth scene was just some enhanced
photography at work.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7QZnwKqopo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7QZnwKqopo)

Even now, it still seems pretty unreal.

I’m glad to learn it’s not manipulated footage, adjusted by what seemed like
possibly the choice to film during overcast weather, with possibly some less-
than-natural lighting and carefully selected camera angles.

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mysterypie
> _Animal eyes and brains are wired to control for the amount of ambient
> light. That’s why an apple looks red whether it is in the sun or the shade,
> even though the wavelength hitting our eyes is quite different in those
> scenarios._

It's not obvious to me why the wavelength should be different when an apple is
viewed in direct sunlight vs indirect sunlight (shade). Dimmer, lower
amplitude, but different wavelength?

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thfuran
Maybe with less direct light, more of the light is made up of light reflected
from surroundings, which quite likely has a different spectral power
distribution than direct sunlight.

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jjoonathan
E.g. many shadows are blue-tinted because they are lit by the non-sun parts of
the sky which are blue because Rayleigh scattering is stronger at short
wavelengths.

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samch
“There’s something about this that’s so black, it’s like how much more black
could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.”

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gpderetta
They do produce mana of any color though.

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guinness74
Went to make this joke and happy someone beat me to it.

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JackFr
No mention of black velvet in the article -- which is famously difficult for
photographers to capture because its so black. I wonder if there is a similar
effect at play.

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bovermyer
My main thought after reading this article was "how can I get a shirt that's
this black?"

I'm probably vain enough that I'd get along well as a bird of paradise.

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noveltyaccount
Can we use this concept to make solar panels more efficient? Why are solar
cells that dark blue color and not black? Shouldn't they absorb all of the
light?

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wyager
I believe solar cells only get electrical energy from photons with energy
roughly corresponding to the bandgap of the cell.

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amelius
Does its spectrum conform to the theory of black body radiation?

