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The solid material is denser than air. It does, however, form a structure which when evacuated of air has a lower average density than air. Letting the air flo
by scarmig 13y ago
The solid material is denser than air. It does, however, form a structure which when evacuated of air has a lower average density than air.
Letting the air flow in fills in those gaps, raising the interstitial density enough that the average is greater than air.
- tempestn 13y agoI keep reading this, but I'm missing what makes it special. If you create a large enough vessel of anything and evacuate all the air, you can make it lighter than air. Is it just that it's rare to find a material strong enough with respect to its density to withstand the necessary vacuum? (ie: would a titanium bubble with a sufficient volume to thickness ratio to be lighter than air implode? Or would it just be too expensive?)
- scarmig 13y agoPretty much, though it's unclear to me whether this material is even strong enough for that. But make it big and strong enough, and you can make even a lead balloon float.
- dsr_ 13y agoBuckminster Fuller thought that if you built a large enough geodesic dome out of normal midcentury materials, you could get enough lift from sunlight-driven thermal expansion of air to float it. http://www.thirteen.org/bucky/cities.html http://www.thirteen.org/bucky/cities.html
- smosher 13y ago> It does, however, form a structure which when evacuated of air has a lower average density than air. Yet apparently it collapses at that point. Unless that's solved we might as well be talking about birthday balloons here.