The material, called Vantablack, is still being developed by the UK-based company Surrey NanoSystems. While the original Vantablack could already absorb 99.96% of light that hits it, Surrey NanoSystems decided to do better.
The latest version of the Vantablack doesn’t even have a percentage figure for its light absorption. Why? Because it absorbs so much light now that the company’s spectrometers can’t measure it anymore.
Where does the light go? Basically, it gets trapped inside the material..
Vantablack, as the material is called, is made by tightly packing carbon nanotubes rods of carbon that are much, much thinner than any human hair so close together that light goes in, but can't escape.
Surrey NanoSystems made the original Vantablack back in 2014, which they said absorbed 99.96% of the light that hit it.
But this new version of Vantablack (which we first heard about from ScienceAlert) is so black that their machines aren't powerful enough to measure its darkness.
Vantablack is mainly being used in research applications now, so you can't, say, buy a can of it to paint your walls with.
But that would be cool. Let us know if they ever start doing that.
