Scientists Invent 'World's Lightest' Material

[Octafish]

Source: PCMag.com

Researchers have created a material that's so light it can rest comfortably on a dandelion seed head without disturbing the fluffy, delicate structure of the plant. The "ultralight metallic microlattice" invented by scientists at UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories, and Caltech is described in the Nov. 18 issue of Science.

The new material is 100 times lighter than styrofoam, according to reports. The secret to its lightness is a cellular architecture fabricated from hollow tubes that supports a material structure that is in reality 99.99 percent air, according to the research team that built it.

That means the material's density is less than one-thousandth that of water. And the stuff is pretty resilient as well—researchers said that when squashed to half its height, the material rebounds 98 percent of the way back.

"The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair," lead author Tobias Shandler of HRL said, according to the Los Angeles Times.


Read more: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2396633,00.asp

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Link to Science article.

Interesting times, these.

[onethatcares]

1. hmmm, area 51 stuff ???

those pesky alien things that don't exist and if they did, couldn't make it through space due to there being no way to make a craft light enough or strong enogh.

ah, I'm just jokin, our scientists are the bestest, ever, in the universe, wherever.

Man, I wish I could think in mathmatics.:headbang:

[AlbertCat]

5. couldn't make it through space due to there being no way to make a craft light enough

Uh... in space, things are weightless.

[truthisfreedom]

7. Weightless, yes, but not massless.

They still have the exact same mass no matter where they are. That mass appears as weight in a gravitational field.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Its called air

and they've now patented it. Continued use is expected to be free................for the time being.

[freshwest]

13. +1,000

[Thor_MN]

3. Huh... I was expecting the story about MRIs of GOP candidates heads...

[Tutankhamun]

4. That old trick.

The "...fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair" trick. Gets 'em every time. 

[malthaussen]

6. But how strong is it?

Not too useful if it is also weaker than a dandelion head...

-- Mal

[truthisfreedom]

8. When I look at this stuff I just want to squish it to see how springy it is...

But then I think "1000th the diameter of a human hair" and then I imagine squeezing a bunch of wires as thin as the sharpest razor blade. Eww.

[PfcHammer]

9. Looks like the metal version of aerogel

[valerief]

10. Yeah, but will it be as useful as Velcro? nt

[truth2power]

11. I'm only the messenger, you understand. But one of the individuals first on the scene at Roswell

claimed to have found pieces of some unknown metallic material that was extremely lightweight and that, when crushed in the hand and then released, reverted to its original shape. Interesting, that!

This was was before the US Army showed up, cordoned off the area. swept it clean, and said, "Nothing to see here. Just move along." :eyes:

[Codeine]

21. Fuckin' DU. nt

[truth2power]

22. OoooKay. Guess I'm a little slow this morning. n/t

[Gore1FL]

12. Not to pick nits...

It is perhaps the worlds least dense material, but "lightest" is meaningless without volume in this instance. Leptons have the least mass of the particles of matter. I do concede they'd make lousy packing material for a number of reasons. :)

Anyways, Interesting article. Thanks for sharing!

[unkachuck]

14. absolutely amazing!

....this reminds me of the series I've been watching, The Fabric of the Cosmos with Brian Greene on PBS. This is a most excellent series 'on everything' which I highly recommend, especially to someone like myself with only a high school education.

....the next 100 years are going to be phenomenal....if we don't destroy ourselves or the planet first....

[Kablooie]

15. Apparently this is lighter than aerogel, the previous lightest material.

And it was developed in Caltech, just a few miles from JPL where aerogel was developed.

Pasadena, the city of light - weight.

[wizstars]

16. Is it really lighter than Michelle Bachmann's head? WOW!

And much more useful! Science is amazing!!

[awoke_in_2003]

17. Rocks really aren't that light

:)

[The Second Stone]

18. Texas invented the lightweight airhead, GWB

and have surpassed his qualities of no-substance know-nothingness in Rick Perry.

[lonestarnot]

19. GA and TN may have surpased with the little floaters in that other dimwit's bean.

[DBoon]

20. beat me to it

I was going to say they isolated the intelligent matter in Bush's brain

[BiggJawn]

23. Arborium

Anybody know what I'm talking about?

[quakerboy]

24. yup

Made for a great ride, but that stuff was unstable.

[Dover]

25. It would help me to visual this if they would provide some of its projected applications..n/t

[quakerboy]

26. Artificial dandylions

Isnt that obvious? They almost spelled it out in the article itself...

In seriousness, though:
"One UC Irvine researcher involved with the project suggested the ultra-lightweight material might be used for impact protection, and might have applications "in the aerospace industry, acoustic dampening, and maybe some battery applications," according to the Times. "

[Dover]

28. I get the impact protection (like a skin?) but am less clear how

it would be applied in acoustic dampening and batteries.

[quakerboy]

29. at a guess

Sound dampening is essentially impact protection. Blocking/dampening a sound wave so that it does not impinge on something on the other side of your block. That one makes some sense to me. Seems like anywhere you can glue foam to a wall, you could glue this to a wall. With a low likelihood that its own weight would eventually pull it free. And maybe the internal structure is particularly good at dampening sound waves. But that's just supposition.

The other one, batteries, I dunno. maybe it makes a good storage lattice for some sort of battery juice? Not a clue.

[jmowreader]

27. The first thing that comes to mind to me is packing material

A 43,000-pound load of product could have 200 pounds of padding in it, depending on what the product is. Reduce that to 50 pounds and you can put 150 pounds more merchandise in the load. That doesn't sound like much, but would you rather pay a guy to haul widgets or styrofoam?

[provis99]

30. we already had the world's lightest material.

Nature invented it: it's called hydrogen.