By: Dan
So a couple years ago, a company called NanoSystems created what was then the blackest material on earth, called Vantablack. It was so black, that it absorbed everything but 0.35% of light. The human eye struggles to determine its shape and dimension, and makes you feel as if you are staring down a black hole. Vantablack has uses in both telescopes and spaceships. It can improve the sensitivity of telescopes to see stars farther away, and its “low reflectance improves the sensitivity of terrestrial, space, and airborne instrumentation.” And now, there’s a new blackest material; or, rather, there is a new way of making it. The new version of Vantablack is so black, it can’t be picked up by spectrometers in infrared, which means it may be a huge help for stealth purposes, hiding from infrared cameras. Vantablack is made up of many microscopic nanotubes, 10,000 times thinner than a strand of hair. Even when a laser pointer was shone upon the material, it didn’t reflect any amount of seeable light. I bet Batman would do anything to get his hands of some of this.
