Science
Related: About this forumNew lightest material ever barely even exists
By Evan Ackerman
For a long time, aerogel was the lightest and least dense material ever made. Late last year, a metallic lattice structure took the crown. And today, the new champion is officially aerographite, with a density so low that it barely exists at all.
The density of aerographite is a mere 0.2 milligram per cubic centimeter. For the record, the next best thing (those metallic lattice structures) are three times heavier at about 0.9 milligram per cubic centimeter. This stuff is more or less entirely made out of air, with what little structure there is consisting of a network of hollow carbon tubes grown at nano and micro scales, which you can see in the electron microscope image above. A clump of it would look something like black sponge, appearing completely opaque despite its absurdly low density (unlike aerogel).
Despite the fragile look, aerographite has some impressive structural properties. You can compress it down to make it 1,000 times smaller, and it'll spring right back to its original size when you let go. It can also support over 40,000 times its own weight, which is 35 times better than aerogel can do.
Aerographite was created by researchers at Hamburg University of Technology and the University of Kiel, who suggest that a good application for this stuff might be as "electrode materials for the increasing demand of batteries and high surface area supercapacitor materials." That's fine, I guess, but just tell me how much it'll cost me to get a blob of aerographite to mess with on my own.
http://dvice.com/archives/2012/07/new-lightest-ma.php
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)If the next lightest material is 0.9mg/ml then it would be 4.5 times heavier than something 0.2mg/ml not 3 times.
longship
(40,416 posts)I can't think of anything. Miracle stuff.
R&K
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)Callmecrazy
(3,065 posts)I wonder how well it conducts heat?
caseymoz
(5,763 posts). . . but if it's so light you could easily inhale it into your lungs, how toxic is it? It seems to me that use of it will be limited by that.
Some might also ask, can you get high off it?
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,400 posts)1 cubic metre = 100x100x100 cubic centimetres = 1,000,000 cc
1 kg = 1000 g = 1,000,000 milligrams
So sea level air is 1.3 mg/cc. It's less than 20% denser than the air in the gaps!
ETA: Wikipedia has some more numbers; they can make it in a variety of densities. A denser version, at 8.5 mg/cc, has an ultimate tensile strength of 160 kPa, compared to an aerogel of density 100 mg/cc, which just has 16 kPa. Ten times as strong, and under a tenth of the weight!
benld74
(9,911 posts)Plucketeer
(12,882 posts)Bush's brain is DENSE.