![]() Nasa had come close, having created a material that absorbed 99.5 per cent of light. Yet it's fair to say the stakes have never been higher. The first company to create a convincing chrome paint, it's widely thought, for use in everything from lightweight airline seats to everyday furniture and architecture, will make a fortune. It is not the first time there's been an arms race to create a colour. The creator of a super-black coating would, effectively, let astronomers see further back in time. Because the light takes so long to reach us, what telescopes capture is the distant past. Previously, a coating called Aeroglaze Z306 was used, which absorbs 97 percent of light. The darker the coating behind the sensor, the less pollution from the sun, and the clearer you can see. Space may seem dark, but up there, in our solar system, the sun is blinding: this is not ideal when you're trying to detect light from stars that are ten million light years away. It was the holy grail for space telescopes. Nasa had been trying to create a super-black material for decades, along with another 15 or so companies around the world. The creation of the blackest black may sound like a gag out of Spinal Tap ("None more black.") but the competition was no joke. Vantablack isn't technically a colour or a pigment at all, but rather a molecular trap for light He found an investor, worked on it for three years and was just about to be certified when the investor died. In his early twenties, using his rocket knowledge, he invented a way to miniaturise liquid-oxygen plants so they could be used in field hospitals. He backpacked around the world, picked fruit and taught himself science on the hoof, reading books such as Rocket Propulsion Elements by George P Sutton, figuring out the equations by himself. it took chunks out of me" - that he decided to move on. It was only when he blew himself up - "There was a crack in the fuel grain. I'd phone up these companies saying, 'Can I buy liquid oxygen?' They'd say, 'Why?' I'd say, 'I'm making a rocket.'" Brrrrrrr. He'd always been obsessed with fireworks and so decided to create ones with a bit more kick, using rocket fuel that he made himself and begging parts from engineering companies. He couldn't afford to go to university, so left school at 16, and it was around then that he started making rockets. His career path as a scientist was not a typical one. Earlier that month, in a decision that had courted much controversy, the Turner Prize-winning artist Sir Anish Kapoor - known for his red observation tower, ArcelorMittal Orbit, created for the 2012 Olympic Games - had signed an exclusive deal with the creators of Vantablack to be the only artist allowed to use it. In all, it was an invention already worth hundreds of millions, possibly billions, which wasn't bad for a company based on an East Sussex trading estate next to a Screwfix.īut the main application the exhibit did not mention was art. ![]() There were already more: in Hollywood in luxury goods even in fashion. ![]() It made clear its applications in space telescopes, allowing them to see further into the cosmos its uses in military applications in architecture in heat absorption. The interactive information panel below made clear some of the myriad applications for this strange material, but even in the two months since it had been installed, was already interactively out of date. It was only side-on that you could even make out a nose. Face on, it simply looked flat: the man didn't have a face. This happens below 0.5 per cent reflectance. On the bust, Vantablack displayed one of its many curious properties: with virtually no light bouncing back, it gave little clue as to its texture, shape, or even if it was an object in three dimensions at all. Stand in a room with all the surfaces coated in Vantablack, and, even with the lights on, it would feel like you're standing in infinity. That phone, placed on a desk, would resemble not a phone, but a hole. That jumper becomes abstract (and, bonus, seemingly creaseless). Vantablack, meanwhile, absorbs 99.96 per cent of light.
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