This latest advanced material can make anything vanish into a black hole.

Thanks to Surrey Nano Systems, you can now spray paint any object and it will disappear into what looks like a flat black hole. They've achieved the impossible using a unique material made of carbon nanotubes called Vantablack. It is so unimaginably black that the human eye actually has trouble processing what it is seeing.

VANTA stands for Vertically Aligned NanoTube Array and is made by “growing” carbon nanotubes on a metal surface. One nanotube is a billionth of a meter thick, or the width of three gold atoms. Light is trapped between the tubes, bouncing around until it’s absorbed (up to 99.96%) instead of reflecting back to our eye. So the only thing we can see is, literally, nothing. Visually, this can make 3D objects appear a flat black... blacker than black.

The possibilities of this new material have excited British architect Asif Khan who has decided to create an unmatched display in the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, plunging spectators into a "schism of space."

Khan wants visitors to fully experience Vantablack’s unique properties and is creating a building for this in the Olympic Park with four curved walls. With tiny lights as stars, the effect will feel like floating in deep space.

“It will be like you’re looking into the depths of space itself. As you approach the building that star field will grow to fill your entire field of view, and then you’ll enter as though you’re being absorbed into a cloud of blackness.”

Blacker than Black Ops

Since it's development over 3 years ago, Vanta Black has been attracting aerospace engineers, architects, artists, electrical engineers, and more. The possibilities for new stealth drones, microchips, touch screens, ultra-light wiring, heat absorption, etc. are endless. This kind of new material gives innovators the kind of resource they've only been able to dream of before.

One of Surrey Nano Systems' founders and the chief technology officer, Ben Jensen, of Surrey NanoSystems said,

"It’s almost like an alien material from “Star Trek.” Imagine a drinking straw, closed at one end, with a wall one-atom thick. This straw is one-ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, but it is 10 times stronger than steel, and 10 times better at conducting heat than copper. It’s been known to exhibit what is called 'ballistic transport;' electrons travel through it with almost no resistance. Vantablack packs billions of these straws together."

I'd love to have a Vanta Black ninja suit but Ben says...

"When I read about making black ninja suits and black aircraft, I just laugh. It’s not a reasonable application."

Okay, I'll settle for a unicorn head trophy.

An object coated in Vantablack appears 2-dimensional and is difficult to perceive. Image Credit: Surrey NanoSystems

Sources:

www.surreynanosystems.com

https://www.livescience.com/58561-spray-on-vantablack-coating-is-blackest-material.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/garden/what-you-can-do-with-vantablack-the-darkest-material-ever-made.html

Think brain-computer interface is mind-blowing? Dive deep into the world of microbot technology.

To enable versatile mobility inside a living organism of moving tissues and cells, these tiny robots are actually made of algae, the spirulina platensis used as a dietary supplement. The lead of a research team, Li Zhang from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has discovered how these can potentially be life-changing, literally.

Distant Future?

Joseph Wang, nanoengineer developing other microbots said, "It's still not ready for a doctor to use." He thinks it will take another 10 years before it will be in doctors' hands.

Ray Kurzweil, Google chief engineer expects such nanobots will start being used by 2030. It seems the challenges are the technical difficulties of powering and controlling these super tiny devices as they interact with the living bio-computer that is the human body. Differentiating the signals and traversing the every-changing interior landscape at the cellular level is no easy task.

As always, beware the dangers of such invasive technologies that can be controlled remotely and may have unintended consequences. Coupled with Artificial Intelligence could compound the issue beyond our control.

Instead of spending millions on artificial tiny robots to search and destroy negative cells in our bodies, why not embrace the natural remedies that purify and strengthen our body's functions and defenses? Perhaps there's a far simpler and more effective solution, like with the example of the United States developing a pen that can write in space's zero gravity, while Russian astronauts used a pencil instead.

Sources:

https://futurism.com/organic-microbots-change-medicine-decade/