6 ms·

Scientists have developed a material so dark that it can't be seen

70 points by davidbarker 12y ago

rlpb 12y ago
This article cites the Independent as its source. The Independent's article is: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/blackest-is-the-new-black-scientists-have-developed-a-material-so-dark-that-you-cant-see-it-9602504.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/blackest-is-the-ne...
awjr 12y ago
Out of curiosity, can this approach be used to other wavelengths?
- moron4hire 12y ago
  "black" is not a wavelength of light. It's the absence of light.
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    What I think the question is, is whether it's possible to create a surface of light that reflects only a very specific (range of) wavelengths; that would be quite interesting actually. Highly accurate colors and such.
    - femto 12y ago
      A Dichroic Filter is an example of what you describe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichroic_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichroic_filter
- femto 12y ago
  Yes. It's the same principle that is used in both microwave and audio anechoic chambers. The pyramidal spikes on the walls [1] of an anechoic chamber are much bigger equivalents of the nanotube spikes being used for light. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Radio-frequency-anechoic-chamber-HDR-0a.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Radio-fr...
Gygash 12y ago
Some digging reveals Surrey NanoSystems as the claimed creators. Their website: http://www.surreynanosystems.com/ http://www.surreynanosystems.com/ Press release for VantaBlack: http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/19/ http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/19/ Mid-2013 press releases [1][2] talk about using "vertically-aligned carbon nanotube (VANTA) arrays" and cite similar absorption rates as the linked article. Okay, now I'm interested. 1: http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/17/ http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/17/ 2: http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/16/ http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/16/
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
ghshephard 12y ago
A lot of funny claims in this article, "Vantablack's practical uses include calibrating cameras used to take photographs of the oldest objects in the universe. This has to be done by pointing the camera at something as black as possible." Just covering with a lens cap would seem to be a simpler way of accomplishing that, and: Stephen Westland, professor of colour science and technology at Leeds University, said traditional black was actually a colour of light and scientists were now pushing it to something out of this world. "Many people think black is the absence of light. I totally disagree with that. Really? I can't think of any better way of describing black.
- madaxe_again 12y ago
  The first one would be a ham-fisted reference to a black-body reference body for determining z for extra-galactic objects. This is not it - nor is a lens cap! Black as a colour - nonsense. What we perceive as black is brought about by maximal absorption or minimal emission of visible light by a body. Frankly it's all based on what a wobbly sphere of cells can and can't detect, so you could have something that pounds out UV, IR, microwaves and gamma radiation and still call it black.
- jerf 12y ago
  "Really? I can't think of any better way of describing black." I suspect the quote got mangled to suit the article. He was probably referring to the fact that since "black" is generally still reflective, it therefore must have some color. We may not be able to see it, but it has something. I'm sure we've all had the experience of seeing something that was "black" become "navy blue" in the sunlight or something. This substance is much closer to "black", and given the mechanism by which it is working it is plausible that the remaining light is essentially reflected without preference, in which case it would technically be a black mirror, which could not be said to have a color in the usual sense of the term. (While, again, I'm sure we've all seen shaded mirrors, we do not tend to call perfect mirrors "white".)
  - mnw21cam 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body If something is perfectly black, then that means that the radiation it is emitting is a perfect black body spectrum, unadorned with spectral emission and absorption lines. If you were to raise its temperature to 4000K or so, it would emit white light, but it would still be "black". This feature would indeed make it useful for calibrating equipment, as the radiation emitted from it would be very predictable, depending on its temperature.
wink 12y ago
Never has a purely #000000 colored symbolic image been put to better use albeit being slightly incorrect.
- athenot 12y ago
  #000000 is in the device-dependent RGB colorspace. Its correlation to a device-independent colorspace depends on—you guessed it—the device. This (absence of a) color can be represented in L* a* b* coordinates as L* = 0. (a* and b* are then irrelevant)
- myfonj 12y ago
  Maybe it is some kind of prank, but actual JPEG [1] used in the article is not pure #000000 it is in fact #010101. [1] http://cdn4.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article30427651.ece/7a4b7/ALTERNATES/w620/black4jpg.jpg http://cdn4.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article30427651....
moron4hire 12y ago
If the human eye can't see it, then it makes no sense to call it a color.
- rvkennedy 12y ago
  But this colour already has a name. It's called "black".
drabiega 12y ago
I've seen a few references to this today, but this is certainly the most link-baity of the bunch.
z3t4 12y ago
What is it in hexadecimal?
- Sae5waip 12y ago
  0, in a suitable color space.
- gpvos 12y ago
  #//////
qwerta 12y ago
We researched dark coating for astronomical telescope. 0.00035 albedo is pretty impressive. It does not reflect any light, nothing human eye could focus on, so it is impossible to judge distance and details. It is practically invisible and alien. So wall out of this material would appear as 'dark hole' and we would practically walk into it. We did also experiment by covering room walls with dark cloth, so it would not reflect any light. It was strangely claustrophobic, you could only see light bulb filament and nothing else. Something like this picture: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:How_Things_Work/Light_Bulb#mediaviewer/File:LightbulbGlow.jpg https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:How_Things_Work/Lig... It would be fashion revolution, If they turn it into practical material safe for humans and weather resistent.
- malkia 12y ago
  What if the "World's Quietest Room" is colored like this... Just wonder :)
  - qwerta 12y ago
    Place nobody wants to be longer than 10 minutes.
    - PavlovsCat 12y ago
      Floating in water in such a room might be usable as a lot less scary sensory deprivation tank.
  - yk 12y ago
    Call it "The Lovecraft experience: Beyond space time" and charge $10 per visit.
  - rrss1122 12y ago
    Sounds like the plot to Nightfall by Isaac Asimov.
slurry 12y ago
http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cs.aspx http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cs.aspx
rootbear 12y ago
It makes me think of Larry Niven's hyperspace "blind spot", which the human brain has so much trouble perceiving that it can cause madness.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  I know I shouldn't, but I have to think of that bit in HGttG when Ford and Zaphod are looking for a spaceship to steal: FORD: No. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute! That one there. ZAPHOD: Hey-yeah! Now that is really bad for the eyes! FORD: I mean it’s so black! You can hardly even make out its shape. Light just falls into it.
nathell 12y ago
In homage to Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Sun", I propose it be called "fuligin."
michaelfeathers 12y ago
I wish I could find the short story 'Absolute Ebony' by Felice Picano online. I always think of it when these breakthroughs happen.
tgb 12y ago
Is there a lower bound on albedo caused by black body radiation? If so, what is it?
- ghkbrew 12y ago
  I think that sort of depends on how you define your terms. Generally albedo is how much of the light which hits an object is reflected. A perfect black body, by definition doesn't reflect any light: all of it is absorbed and converted into thermal energy. It does however emit light with a frequency spectrum dependent on its temperature. So if you wanted to, you could calculate a pseudo-albedo as incident light over emitted light for various conditions, but it wouldn't be an intrinsic property of your material like albedo is usually considered

70 points by davidbarker 12y ago

rlpb 12y ago

This article cites the Independent as its source. The Independent's article is: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/blackest-is-the-new-black-scientists-have-developed-a-material-so-dark-that-you-cant-see-it-9602504.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/blackest-is-the-ne...

awjr 12y ago

Out of curiosity, can this approach be used to other wavelengths?

moron4hire 12y ago
"black" is not a wavelength of light. It's the absence of light.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  What I think the question is, is whether it's possible to create a surface of light that reflects only a very specific (range of) wavelengths; that would be quite interesting actually. Highly accurate colors and such.
  - femto 12y ago
    A Dichroic Filter is an example of what you describe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichroic_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichroic_filter
femto 12y ago
Yes. It's the same principle that is used in both microwave and audio anechoic chambers. The pyramidal spikes on the walls [1] of an anechoic chamber are much bigger equivalents of the nanotube spikes being used for light. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Radio-frequency-anechoic-chamber-HDR-0a.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Radio-fr...

Gygash 12y ago

Some digging reveals Surrey NanoSystems as the claimed creators. Their website: http://www.surreynanosystems.com/ http://www.surreynanosystems.com/ Press release for VantaBlack: http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/19/ http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/19/ Mid-2013 press releases [1][2] talk about using "vertically-aligned carbon nanotube (VANTA) arrays" and cite similar absorption rates as the linked article. Okay, now I'm interested. 1: http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/17/ http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/17/ 2: http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/16/ http://www.surreynanosystems.com/news/16/

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

ghshephard 12y ago

A lot of funny claims in this article, "Vantablack's practical uses include calibrating cameras used to take photographs of the oldest objects in the universe. This has to be done by pointing the camera at something as black as possible." Just covering with a lens cap would seem to be a simpler way of accomplishing that, and: Stephen Westland, professor of colour science and technology at Leeds University, said traditional black was actually a colour of light and scientists were now pushing it to something out of this world. "Many people think black is the absence of light. I totally disagree with that. Really? I can't think of any better way of describing black.

madaxe_again 12y ago
The first one would be a ham-fisted reference to a black-body reference body for determining z for extra-galactic objects. This is not it - nor is a lens cap! Black as a colour - nonsense. What we perceive as black is brought about by maximal absorption or minimal emission of visible light by a body. Frankly it's all based on what a wobbly sphere of cells can and can't detect, so you could have something that pounds out UV, IR, microwaves and gamma radiation and still call it black.
jerf 12y ago
"Really? I can't think of any better way of describing black." I suspect the quote got mangled to suit the article. He was probably referring to the fact that since "black" is generally still reflective, it therefore must have some color. We may not be able to see it, but it has something. I'm sure we've all had the experience of seeing something that was "black" become "navy blue" in the sunlight or something. This substance is much closer to "black", and given the mechanism by which it is working it is plausible that the remaining light is essentially reflected without preference, in which case it would technically be a black mirror, which could not be said to have a color in the usual sense of the term. (While, again, I'm sure we've all seen shaded mirrors, we do not tend to call perfect mirrors "white".)
- mnw21cam 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body If something is perfectly black, then that means that the radiation it is emitting is a perfect black body spectrum, unadorned with spectral emission and absorption lines. If you were to raise its temperature to 4000K or so, it would emit white light, but it would still be "black". This feature would indeed make it useful for calibrating equipment, as the radiation emitted from it would be very predictable, depending on its temperature.

wink 12y ago

Never has a purely #000000 colored symbolic image been put to better use albeit being slightly incorrect.

athenot 12y ago
#000000 is in the device-dependent RGB colorspace. Its correlation to a device-independent colorspace depends on—you guessed it—the device. This (absence of a) color can be represented in L* a* b* coordinates as L* = 0. (a* and b* are then irrelevant)
myfonj 12y ago
Maybe it is some kind of prank, but actual JPEG [1] used in the article is not pure #000000 it is in fact #010101. [1] http://cdn4.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article30427651.ece/7a4b7/ALTERNATES/w620/black4jpg.jpg http://cdn4.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article30427651....

moron4hire 12y ago

If the human eye can't see it, then it makes no sense to call it a color.

rvkennedy 12y ago
But this colour already has a name. It's called "black".

drabiega 12y ago

I've seen a few references to this today, but this is certainly the most link-baity of the bunch.

z3t4 12y ago

What is it in hexadecimal?

Sae5waip 12y ago
0, in a suitable color space.
gpvos 12y ago
#//////

qwerta 12y ago

We researched dark coating for astronomical telescope. 0.00035 albedo is pretty impressive. It does not reflect any light, nothing human eye could focus on, so it is impossible to judge distance and details. It is practically invisible and alien. So wall out of this material would appear as 'dark hole' and we would practically walk into it. We did also experiment by covering room walls with dark cloth, so it would not reflect any light. It was strangely claustrophobic, you could only see light bulb filament and nothing else. Something like this picture: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:How_Things_Work/Light_Bulb#mediaviewer/File:LightbulbGlow.jpg https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:How_Things_Work/Lig... It would be fashion revolution, If they turn it into practical material safe for humans and weather resistent.

malkia 12y ago
What if the "World's Quietest Room" is colored like this... Just wonder :)
- qwerta 12y ago
  Place nobody wants to be longer than 10 minutes.
  - PavlovsCat 12y ago
    Floating in water in such a room might be usable as a lot less scary sensory deprivation tank.
- yk 12y ago
  Call it "The Lovecraft experience: Beyond space time" and charge $10 per visit.
- rrss1122 12y ago
  Sounds like the plot to Nightfall by Isaac Asimov.

slurry 12y ago

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cs.aspx http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cs.aspx

rootbear 12y ago

It makes me think of Larry Niven's hyperspace "blind spot", which the human brain has so much trouble perceiving that it can cause madness.

PavlovsCat 12y ago
I know I shouldn't, but I have to think of that bit in HGttG when Ford and Zaphod are looking for a spaceship to steal: FORD: No. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute! That one there. ZAPHOD: Hey-yeah! Now that is really bad for the eyes! FORD: I mean it’s so black! You can hardly even make out its shape. Light just falls into it.

nathell 12y ago

In homage to Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Sun", I propose it be called "fuligin."

michaelfeathers 12y ago

I wish I could find the short story 'Absolute Ebony' by Felice Picano online. I always think of it when these breakthroughs happen.

tgb 12y ago

Is there a lower bound on albedo caused by black body radiation? If so, what is it?

ghkbrew 12y ago
I think that sort of depends on how you define your terms. Generally albedo is how much of the light which hits an object is reflected. A perfect black body, by definition doesn't reflect any light: all of it is absorbed and converted into thermal energy. It does however emit light with a frequency spectrum dependent on its temperature. So if you wanted to, you could calculate a pseudo-albedo as incident light over emitted light for various conditions, but it wouldn't be an intrinsic property of your material like albedo is usually considered