• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Archives

The Fox Gazette

Informative and Entertaining News

  • Australia
  • World
    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Asia Pacific
    • Europe
    • Middle East
  • Science
    • Evolution
    • Space & Cosmos
  • Environment
    • Conservation
    • Wildlife
Home » Science » Scientists Develop Blackest Material Ever Known

Scientists Develop Blackest Material Ever Known

June 22, 2010 by Andy T 1 Comment

Blackest material

In an astonishing display of synthetic madness, scientists have taken it upon themselves to create the blackest material ever known to man.

The material doesn’t owe its unusually dark hue to nature, rather it is a manmade ‘metamaterial’, a labyrinth of innumerable tiny silver wires set in aluminium oxide.

Once light hits this metamaterial, it is reflected and bent at extraordinarily obtuse angles and sent in entirely unnatural directions, such as never seen before. Indeed, the closest analogue to the material is believed to be the opening of an incomprehensibly deep hole.

The device was developed by a team of scientists lead by Evgenii Narimanov, from the Purdue University in Indiana. Professor Narimanov explains how the material reflects less than 0.1% of light whilst absorbing the rest. This, he adds, owes to the object’s blacker than black on an extremely dark night appearance.

When asked the point of such a device, Professor Narimanov responds unsurprisingly, “it’s a military accessory designed to evade the detection of radar”.

It seems this may not be the only use for this light sucking apparatus, as Shawn-Yu Lin, Physicist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y, explains –  “this discovery will allow us to increase the absorption efficiency of light as well as the overall radiation-to-electricity efficiency of solar energy conservation”.

Nanotechnologists also believe the material would be useful collecting heat in the frigid vacuum of space.

In fact, the metamaterial has triggered speculation that light may soon be manipulated to the point where objects become invisible to the naked eye. This, however, is much, much harder to achieve, as light wavelengths are preposterously small.

Therefore, it may still be some time before die hard Harry Potter fans, anthropologists, hide and seek Olympians, kleptomaniacs and perverts can lay their hands on any cloak of invisibility.

RELATED POSTS

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Email

Filed Under: Science Tagged With: darkness, technology

Comments

  1. Aretta says

    August 25, 2010 at 23:28

    Absolutely fascinating!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Welcome to The Fox Gazette, where the pent-up fox and friends put on their sarsaparilla wetsuits and dive into the colourful crevices of world news. Find out more here.

Popular Posts

Research on AIDS Leaves Cats Glowing Green

Asian Hornets Cooked Alive by Bittersweet Honeybees

Butter-Lovers Bemoan as Denmark Unveils ‘The Fat Tax’

Indonesian Pilots Fly Sky-High on Crystal Meth

Urine Therapy – A Collection of Golden Tales

The Children of Technology – A New Species

The True Life Story of the Englishman – An Average Tale

Despair in The Land of The Immortals

Amazon Secrets Discovered Beneath ‘The Black River’

Hundreds of Endangered Animal Species Found in Luggage

Let’s connect

  • Twitter

Evolution

Scientists Reveal Ancient Mammoth Blood Secret

Space & Cosmos

Sniffing For Life on Mars

Conservation

Will Human Population Growth Cause An Extinction?

Wildlife

Freak Thunderbolt Kills Over 300 Reindeer in Norway

recent posts

  • Freak Thunderbolt Kills Over 300 Reindeer in Norway
  • Inky the Octopus Legs it From Aquarium
About | Contact | Copyright © 2010–2023 The Fox Gazette. All rights reserved.