The Next Breakthrough?

[Baker]

I don't fully comprehend what this stuff is, but apparently in recent years they are getting closer to being able to mass produce some sort of weird substance invented in 1931.

It's call aerogel and it is some sort of foam made from air.

In the picture below, this aerogel is being heated by a blow torch and the rose sitting on top of it is not affected by the heat. It is some sort of superinsulator.



It also weighs almost nothing ...





Some more pictures at the NASA web site:

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/photo/aerogel.html

Information on this seems to be scarce, I don't know what use it has but it seems that like scientists think it can have a lot of different applications.

[Amon26]

Oooh aerogel! I love this stuff!

It's been used by NASA and some private industries for aerospace and deep space projects. It's excellent for being able to capture particles (see the NASA site) and the trajectories they enter at, so I think it's used in some satellites in order to measure what is floating around up above out atmosphere.

I guess it's been pretty expensive to make, but i guess it's gotten much cheaper and easier to mass produce! Woohoo! I could think of a few fun things I could do with this stuff Great kids toy!

[Canadian*Sniper]

looks so cool

[=peg=]

it's been used for collecting stardust...

[Grim]

My first thought when I read this was fire proofing homes with it. California for example.

[foq]

Nice one Grim. The only thought that came to my mind was how useless it would be as a heatsink for cooling computer parts :/

[spooker]

we should make aircraft out of it. anyone interested in taking up the project?

[Canadian*Sniper]

sure Spooker. You can sponsor me for it. I'll take my $900 billion now please




in cash.