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MIT engineers have created such a black material that it is recording a new record of darkness.
This new ultra-black material, reported by MIT News on Thursday, is composed of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes grown on chlorine-treated aluminum foil. It captures 99.995% of the light, which makes it about 10 times darker than the previous record holder, Vantablack.
To show how much the material eats light, MIT's resident artist, Diemut Strebe, collaborated with MIT engineer Brian Wardle to coat a 16.78-carat natural yellow diamond called. Basically, all the diamond disappears. The picture above does not contain any visible features.
At present, the diamond is on display at the New York Stock Exchange as part of a new art exhibition.
One of the interesting aspects of the new blackest material is that the engineers created it involuntarily. Wardle and MIT's post-doctorate, Kehang Cui, were working on ways to develop carbon nanotubes on conductive materials such as aluminum.
During a particular experiment during which they tested different methods to remove the oxide layer surrounding aluminum in order to achieve more efficient growth, the scientists found out at which point the color was dark. It would be hard not to notice the darkest material ever seen.
This dark material can be used for tasks such as the shadow of stars in space, which would prevent a telescope from receiving too much light.
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