Darker than dark
Types of carbon nanotubes
Courtesy Wikimedia CommonsUS researchers announced they have created the "darkest man-made material ever", using sheets of carbon just a single atom thick and rolled into tubes.
The nanotubes possess properties that make them great absorbers of light, and - at the same time – very lousy reflectors of it. And by roughing up the tube’s surface, scientists can adjust the material to make it scatter light even more.
"The periodic nanotube structures make an ideal candidate for creating superdark materials, because it allows one to tailor light absorption by controlling the dimensions and periodicities of nanotubes in the structure," said Dr Pulickel Ajayan, of Rice University in Houston, Texas, who led the team of researchers.
This stuff is so dark Ajayan and his team have entered it in the Guinness Book of World Records.
So what good is superdark material? Will it change your life? Just how dark do your groovy sunglasses really need to be?
Well, a super light-absorber could prove to be very useful in such things as electronics, computer chip technology, solar panels and solar-cells, or telescope optics. Just about anything that collects light or solar energy could benefit.
SOURCE
BBC.com
Houston Chronicle story
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Who are these "US reserchers" and who are they associated with? Thanks.
mdr may want to correct me on this, but I believe that these reserchers are from Rice University in Houston, Texas, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.
Also, wasn't there a scene in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe that had something to do with this? A black spaceship? Or was that scene in my imagination only?
Dr Pulickel Ajayan, who is quoted and listed as the lead researcher in my posting, used to be at RPI but is currently at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe was a total dive. The service was lousy and their coffee tasted like soap and turpentine. I doubt they ever had any black spaceships there.
Here's some video of Dr Pulickel Ajayan lecturing on nanotechnology at RPI back in 2006.
Here is a link to a photo of the Rice University researchers who created a thin carpet of carbon nanotubes that's four times darker than the previous record-holder.
I did a post about the research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute last March (Nanotechnology creates reflection black hole). Maybe they beat their own record.
reminds me of the materil used to make the alien monolith in "2001 a Space Odessy"
i want to know where they came from and who they work for.
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