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This Object Has Been Sprayed With the World's Blackest Material, and It's Freaking Us Out
Seriously, that's not Photoshopped.
Well, we've finally cracked it. Scientists have finally figured out how to paint a portal to another dimension, as prophesied by Loony Tunes' the Roadrunner. Who wants to try driving a (very small) truck right through that gaping void circle?
In all seriousness, what you're looking at isn't actually a portal to another dimension - but it's not Photoshop, either. That really is a physical object that's been sprayed with Vantablack - the blackest material known to science.
If you're not familiar with Vantablack, it was invented by British researchers back in 2014, and soon after, it was declared the darkest material ever produced in the lab, capable of absorbing 99.96 percent of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light.
Since then, the team behind the invention - from Surrey NanoSystems - has upped its blackness, and in early 2016, announced that no spectrometer in the world was powerful enough to measure how much light it absorbs.
"Even running a high power laser pointer across it barely reflects anything back to the viewer," the researchers explain in a YouTube video. "We have never before made a material so 'black' that it can't be picked up on our spectrometers in the infrared."
Seriously, that's not Photoshopped.
Well, we've finally cracked it. Scientists have finally figured out how to paint a portal to another dimension, as prophesied by Loony Tunes' the Roadrunner. Who wants to try driving a (very small) truck right through that gaping void circle?
In all seriousness, what you're looking at isn't actually a portal to another dimension - but it's not Photoshop, either. That really is a physical object that's been sprayed with Vantablack - the blackest material known to science.
If you're not familiar with Vantablack, it was invented by British researchers back in 2014, and soon after, it was declared the darkest material ever produced in the lab, capable of absorbing 99.96 percent of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light.
Since then, the team behind the invention - from Surrey NanoSystems - has upped its blackness, and in early 2016, announced that no spectrometer in the world was powerful enough to measure how much light it absorbs.
"Even running a high power laser pointer across it barely reflects anything back to the viewer," the researchers explain in a YouTube video. "We have never before made a material so 'black' that it can't be picked up on our spectrometers in the infrared."