you can make love with it.. but not to it.

fucking awesome

*promote FOR SCIECNCE

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Monday, June 22nd, 2009 5:47pm PDT - promote requested by ponceleon.

Yeah yeah, but is it biodegradable? Decades ago plastic was the "miracle material" and now it composes a great deal of our landfills, hardly any gets recycled, and we have plastic "dead zones" in the ocean because of over manufacturing.

^

HERETIC!!! BURN HIM!!!!


EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE MADE OF THIS STUFF! ITS AWESOMENESS IS BEYOND REPROACH!

>> ^zombieater:
Yeah yeah, but is it biodegradable? Decades ago plastic was the "miracle material" and now it composes a great deal of our landfills, hardly any gets recycled, and we have plastic "dead zones" in the ocean because of over manufacturing.

Well, if the material is really Silicon Dioxide (SiO2, or Silica), then you use it every day already.

It's used in so many common items (glass, for example, is fused silica) that it's really not even remarkable anymore. Until new applications like this surface...

Real scientists don't care if their safety glasses are crooked.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

So, must be very difficult/expensive to manufacture- or we would see it used in a lot more applications

Damn, this would be badass for insulation in homes. Wonder what the cost is to manufacture?

I remember a different "lightest substance on earth" which was also developped by NASA, but it wasn't anything like this. It was whitish, lighter than air, very soft, and oddly enough, edible. Even with it's protective plastic wrapping on, it floated in air. Anyone else see that show?

Yay! This is what I studied as an undergrad! Any other Materials Science and Engineering majors here?

IIRC it dissolves in water, which is one of the reasons why it isn't currently wide spread, I imagine.

Think of all the cool bath toys you'd have otherwise.

Aerogel-ducky, you're the one...

I found pricing between $75 and $120 per cubic centimetre. That may be why he has a slightly pained expression when he breaks a piece.

According to Cabot Corp, one of the manufacturers of aerogel, it is completely hydrophobic, so I would guess the deterrent from its use as a bath toy is cost...

Here's a 10-year-old who produced his own aerogels.

The claim that it supports "400 times its weight in compressive load" doesn't really impress me all that much when the stuff is the "least dense substance ever created."

Still, looks awesome.

Well if we can't impress Ted, why are we even bothering?

>> ^ReverendTed:
The claim that it supports "400 times its weight in compressive load" doesn't really impress me all that much when the stuff is the "least dense substance ever created."
Still, looks awesome.



Watch it again, its 4000 THOUSAND times.

>> ^Dranzerk:
>> ^ReverendTed:
The claim that it supports "400 times its weight in compressive load" doesn't really impress me all that much when the stuff is the "least dense substance ever created."
Still, looks awesome.


Watch it again, its 4000 THOUSAND times.


So is that like FOUR MILLION?!

>> ^Dranzerk:
Watch it again, its 4000 THOUSAND times.

Oop. I "misremembered" that statistic. Still, even at 4000 times, I stand by the assertion.

Yogi's absolutely right, though. Science needs to kick it up a notch if it wants to hang with Ted.

I have a block of this stuff a friend from HP gave me. It crumbles very easily, and playing with it means you always end up with a little less than you started with. It's cool to shine a laser through it and see the path. I did the blowtorch thing, too, and it works. It also floats on the 'smoke' jut above dry ice if there's enough dry ice in a container like an ice chest.

There's another video somewhere that shows them put a cube of Aerogel in a white hot furnace. He takes it out with a pair of tongs and then picks it up, still glowing bright red. It is such a good insulator and such a bad conductor of heat that it doesn't even feel warm.

It's too bad they don't make more of it so we could all play with it. It is expensive. I can't wait until the patent expires.