Thanks very much!

In reply to this comment by ponceleon:
fucking awesome

*promote FOR SCIECNCE

Tags for this video have been changed from 'New Scientis, carbon nanotubes, aerogel, artificial muscle' to 'New Scientis, carbon nanotubes, aerogel, artificial muscle, skynet' - edited by kulpims

I'd never pay $159 for it, but I would be a gigolo to the female scientists who could flip me a little aerogel on the side every few days.

Yes, that is another application.
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/tech/aerogel.html

Aerogel is also used by NASA to capture particles coming off comets for analysis as far as I recall.

Hey, he's a geek with too much money. But given a choice between $158 worth of gold, or $158 worth of aerogel, I'd go with the latter. It's very neat stuff. The reason it looks blue is Rayleigh scattering (same reason the sky is blue). Stephen Steiner, a high school student at the time, invented a revolutionary way to make this stuff, taking it from something that would take days, to something that could be done in seconds. Fast enough that, once he entered college, he build a machine to make this in zero-G, and has made a number of trips on the Vomit Comet to test it. Made in weightlessness, it has much less of a blue tint. The goal is to make one completely transparent that can be sandwiched between two panes of glass as the ultimate window. Imagine a window that someone could be heating with a blowtorch on one side, while on the other side someone could have their face pressed up against the glass, and be completely comfortable.

This is revolutionary stuff.

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

So what the hell is he going to do with that $159 piece of Aerogel?

There's a nifty picture floating around of a blowtorch being applied directly to a thin layer of aerogel that crayons are resting on.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,70268-1.html

Not the most exciting clip but pretty cool. You can buy some of this stuff (and some uranium if it tickles your fancy) online for a ridiculous price...

http://unitednuclear.com/aerogel.htm