
NASA creates groundbreaking super black light absorbing material - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/nasa-creates-groundbreaking-super-black-light-absorbing-material-2011119/
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WiseWeasel
" _The question then becomes, how can it be put to use on Earth, and what
benefits could we see on the surface of the planet rather than above it?_ "

I'm sure there are many applications as an interior coating in optics, such as
photography, cinematography, telescopy and microscopy, leading to sharper
images. E-Ink displays could use it on the dark side of their "pixels" for
higher contrast. Car body paint shops could offer it for the darkest matte
black on the block. I could finally have the ultimate set of curtains to
ensure cave-like darkness on the brightest day. Ninjas will appreciate it for
moving undetected through the shadows (and slightly more commonly with special
forces and swat teams, who might also appreciate the coating on their gear). I
could get an ultra-black turtleneck to make it look like my disembodied head
and hands are animating themselves. My cell phone could be blacker than anyone
else's. And finally, this could make for really high-contrast black-light
posters.

~~~
moe
_Car body paint shops could offer it for the darkest matte black on the
block._

This might not be such a good idea when you consider that "black cars are 47
per cent more likely to be involved in road accidents".

Source: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/7845366/Black-
cars-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/7845366/Black-cars-more-
likely-to-be-involved-in-crashes.html)

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Maybe they just aren't black enough...

~~~
umarmung
But does it blend and can I wear it?

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bh42222
NASA article: [http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/super-
black-m...](http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/super-black-
material.html)

With more information, more pictures, and less confusion about "absorbing
light leading to _lower_ temperatures."

~~~
andrewflnr
Thanks. On my iPad, the original link seems to go into an infinite redirect
loop. I doubt I missed much.

~~~
S_A_P
Same here on iPhone. This drives me nuts when mobile sites "break" the web. I
would rather double tap and scroll than put up with a subpar mobile
experience. Now with the iOS 5 reader, I think that mobile sites are mostly
irrelevant.

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ggchappell
Well, there is super-black light-absorbing material.

And then there is super black-light-absorbing material.

What a difference a couple of hyphens makes.

\-- Your Friendly Neighborhood Punctuation Person

EDIT:

Really, there are gobs of possible interpretations. The material could be
super (wow, what a material!), black (its color), light (not heavy -- or maybe
it's made of light?), and absorbing (soaks up water?). It could be super,
black, and light-absorbing. It might absorb black light that is super. It
might absorb light that is super-black.

I count 11 possible interpretations in all. For the combinatorially minded out
there, it does appear that the Catalan numbers are involved. But I don't get
14 (= C_4) because 3 of the interpretations don't parse; it doesn't work for
"light-absorbing" to get a modifier (how could "light-absorbing" be "black"
[whether or not the result is "super"], and how could "light-absorbing" be
"super-black"?).

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celias
Wired had an article a couple of years ago about a similar sounding black
material made by Japanese nanotechnologists.
<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/ultrablack/>

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peregrine
Couldn't it also be used in solar technology? It absorbs the light and I
assume it stores it as heat, seems like the next logical step...

~~~
rflrob
PV technology, as far as I know, works less efficiently at higher
temperatures, so the heat storage might not be desirable. On the other hand,
there's also concentrated solar power, which uses giant arrays of mirrors to
heat up water for use in a traditional steam turbine, for which this might be
useful.

~~~
khafra
Your dad's Solar panels weren't PV--they were black panels with water
circulating through them. This color would help with that.

~~~
ars
There is photovoltaic, and solar thermal. One uses heat, the other uses
electromagnetic light.

This black stuff would help with the solar thermal type - but for a power
plant a difference of 1% is completely unimportant, so this will never be used
for that unless it's extremely cheap.

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teamonkey
This material reminds me of asbestos in many ways. Would there be any health
problems with repeated exposure to billions of tiny fibres like this?

~~~
nobody3141592
The jury is still out on exactly how bad nano-tubes are but the good news is
that they are generally too small to block your lungs in the same was a soot
particles and too soft to cause any mechanical damage.

Asbestos fibres are much larger and much stronger - it's like comparing steel
drill swarf to chocolate flakes!

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thirdhaf
This has been known a while. The earliest paper that I can find describing
this phenomenon is from 2009 [1] but I distinctly recall seeing some slides
describing R&D results corroborating this at least as far back as 2007.

This is neat stuff in general but sometimes I think people oversell the
utility of structured forests of nanomaterials. There are even startups
promising the sky based on nanostructured silicon. [2]

[1] <http://www.pnas.org/content/106/15/6044.full>

[2] <http://www.bandgap.com/contactus.html>

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eavc
It's like, how much more black could this be?

~~~
petewailes
None more black

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timhastings
Well done NASA!

This sounds like the same futuristic material coating the super-fast spaceship
that Zaphod and Ford Prefect were admiring outside Milliways in Hitch Hiker's
Guide to the Galaxy.

~~~
mrleinad
So, this is the paint for the monolith in 2001: A.S.O.

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kokey
I wonder how well it absorbs radar.

~~~
maaku
The features of this material are way to small to have any direct effect on
radar.

It might be used to make a stealthy surface even stealthier though.

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njharman
> Because the light absorption level is so high, the super-black material will
> also keep temperatures down

Can someone with more physics knowledge explain how absorbing more energy will
result in reduced temperatures. I would assume the opposite.

~~~
nobody3141592
If you are facing something really cold and black - like space then the
blacker your radiator is the more power you can emit at a given temperature.

In theory a perfectly reflective silver object would never cool down and a
perfectly black one would cool to -270C however much power you dumped into it

~~~
ars
That is not true. A perfectly reflective silver object still emits blackbody
radiation.

And a perfectly blank one will absorb light, heat up and also emit blackbody
radiation.

~~~
nobody3141592
A Mr Kirchof would disagree with you if he wasn't dead.

A perfect emitter facing an infinite cold sink is in perfect equibirium at the
temperature of the cold sink.

~~~
ars
Of course - but that's not what you said.

You said: "...would cool to -270C however much power you dumped into it" and
that is not true.

And in any case you don't need to be a perfect emitter to be in equilibrium
with the temperature of the cold sink, all you need is infinite time, but any
emitter, no matter how bad will eventually equilibrize.

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eps
It'd be cool to have a robe made of this. Like the one that that extra evil MF
Dexter Quinn from Neutronium Alchemist had :)

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spaznode
Probably a good article if it weren't impossible to read due to broken mobile
detection "logic" in infinite redirect.

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wittjeff
^f Tycho. _sigh_

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georgieporgie
I immediately thought of Hotblack Desiato's limo.

 _"It's so ... black!" said Ford Prefect, "you can hardly make out its shape
... light just seems to fall into it!"_ _Zaphod said nothing. He had simply
fallen in love._ _The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost
impossible to tell how close you were standing to it._

