Aluminum foil covered with ultrablack carbon nanotubes. Folds and creases disappear into black emptiness. Image credit: Surrey NanoSystems and UK Independent.

A British company, Surrey NanoSystems, has  produced “Vantablack”, a “strange, alien” material so black that it absorbs all but 0.035 per cent of visual light, setting a new world record, according to the UK Independent:

To stare at the “super black” coating made of carbon nanotubes – each 10,000 times thinner than a human hair – is an odd experience. It is so dark that the human eye cannot understand what it is seeing. Shapes and contours are lost, leaving nothing but an apparent abyss.

[…] it’s like black, like a hole, like there’s nothing there. It just looks so strange,” said Ben Jensen, the firm’s chief technical officer.

Read the whole thing.