Scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have unveiled the blackest black ever produced at an art exhibition in New York and it is striking. The material, which is 10 times blacker than anything ever before reported, is made from carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and cuts out over 99.99 percent of light.
Surprisingly enough, however, the amazing was achieved by accident as a result of the team of engineers experimenting with different ways to create CNTs or thin tubes of carbon that are strong and excellent conductors of heat and electricity.
Today, we talk more about the blackest black ever and what its future uses will be. Accidental victoryBrian Wardle's team at MIT had been trying to grow CNTs on aluminum when they reached a hurdle.
They found that a layer of oxide would coat the aluminum as soon as it was exposed to air—and this layer stopped it from conducting heat and electricity. To remove the oxide layer, Wardle and colleagues used salt to dissolve the layer. Darker than dark measurements showed the material absorbed over 99.995 percent of incoming light from every angle, making it practically invisible within the dark.
The artist who collaborated with the MIT scientists, Diemut Strebe said in a statement that any object covered with this CNT material loses all its plasticity and appears entirely flat, abbreviated/reduced to a black silhouette. Were you ever mesmerized by Harry
Potter’s cloak of invisibility? Well, this is as close as we’ll get to reciprocate that.
A kind of black holeStrebe and the MIT team unveiled the material at an exhibition called The Redemption of vanity at theNew York Stock Exchange. In it, the team cloaked a 16.78-carat natural yellow diamond in the material
to show how it disappeared into the darkness. Diamonds, which are also made of carbon, is one of the best reflectors of light found on Earth.
