How black is vantablack? About as black as you could imagine.
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Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck out over there, and Jerry's hanging around somewhere, and this is short stuff about Vanta Black, which is pretty cool. It is uh and it's funny. I never really thought about variations of black until a couple of years ago, when we finally were able to professionally renovate our house and not just to have me do it poorly, because I wanted my upstairs office to be black because it's got lots of windows and tons of light, and so it wouldn't have that, you know, dungeon like feel even if it were black. And I didn't know how many blacks there were to choose from until I started looking. It was really interesting. Yeah, there's a ton and actually, um, if you wanted to go super duper black Chuck, it would it cost you a pretty penny had you been like, I'm gonna paint this whole thing in Vanta black, because that's some expensive stuff. I'm think you can buy it, can't you. I don't know. I think there is something called v b X two, which is a bit of a paint, like an actual paint that you could spray on but I yeah, I don't get the impression that that you could buy it. And as a matter of fact, I guess if you would buy it or tried to buy it, you would be running a foul of a license held by an artist name nich kapoor Um, who supposedly is the only person legally allowed to buy Vanta Black. So who knows in this crazy world. But a lot of people are probably like, what are you guys talking about? What was so great about this Vana Black that it would it would war in its own short stuff episode? And I say to those people, kick back and listen up, because Vanta Black is pretty interesting stuff, that's right. Uh. If you would be interested in having a really, really really deep black, oh, let's say one that absorbs I don't know, Pot nine six of light, then Vanta Black is for you. It was I remember when US came out, I think it's about six or seven years ago from Surrey Nanosystems. Uh. They very much were proud of the fact that they set a world record for their vertically aligned nanotube array black, which is what it stands for as being the blackest black of all time, right, and it's called vertically aligned nanotube array black because uh it's actually made up of nanotubes UM. I was looking into it's like, well, how how would that create a black pigment? And it's pretty interesting. These these tubes are super super tall UM and they're so they're vertically oriented, so they're standing up on end and apparently the ratio between their width, their diameter, and their length is like one to one million, So for say every nanometer that they are around, there a million nanometers tall, and they're really tightly crowded together, so there's like a billion nanotubes per square centimeter of you know, whatever's painted van of black, and they actually capture light. The light goes into these nanotubes and can't find its way out and eventually just dissipates his heat, which means that the reflective uh nous of anything painted in vanta black or with nanocarbon nano um carbon tubes UM like that, like you just don't see anything. There's no ridges, there's no um depth, there's no anything. It's just basically like you're looking at a void and all you can see is the silhouette of that thing that's painted van of black, which makes it pretty awesome. All right, how about we take a break. That's a great cliffhanger, and we'll talk a little bit about why anyone cares because it is kind of cool. Right after this m did you ever see spinal Tap? I think you did, right, Yes. Do you remember the none more Black joke? No, it's when they came out with their black album and they said look at the cover, how black is that or something like that, and he goes, it could be none more black. And there's a very subtle joke in that scene which I didn't pick up on until about my thirtieth viewing, which is they have a record store release signing for their black album and they're sitting there holding black sharpiets, but they don't gave attention to it. That's great. Those are usually the best kinds of jokes where you know it's you just have to pick up on it. You know it's pretty great. Um, So we teached you with why would anyone care about having something that black? And the original purpose of vanti Black was for space travel or maybe an application on something to improve visibility of something very in the very far distance. So I think, like, uh, like if you have a telescope or something coding the inside and maybe even outside of that. With Vanti black, it would absorb all of that light coming in. That really just takes away any glare that you could think of, right exactly. So there's like a lot of scientific applications to it. But if you say, like the black is black, that doesn't really let light escape. It tends to also um capture the attention of artists and designs and designers of course, and designers qualify as artists, but you know, we like to separate them out here there, and I just did. And in fact, some car designers from BMW said, hey, we want to use Vanto black to basically paint a BMW x x um so that we can like look at the silhouettes and not have to worry about, you know, any kind of glare or anything like that. They basically used it. I think they really did it as a publicity stunt. They ostensibly did it so that they could study the shapes of the cars without being distracted by glare or reflection in there. And if you look at this, this BMW X six, it is pretty cool to look at. It's awesome. And I'm not even a card guy, but I looked at that, and I was like, that's pretty sweet. Yeah, because again, when you look at something like this head on, it's letting such a little amount of light escape that there's there's no there's no perspective or or any angles or anything in it. It's just the silhouette of it. Ideally. Um, so it is pretty cool to look at. But I saw a watch by H. Moser and Company. Um, they released a seventy five thousand dollar Vanta black watch and the the the minute and our hands are just hovering in the middle of this chasm, this void. That's the watch face which has been painted vana black. It's it's it's very cool to see as a matter of fact. So it's really hard to come by, but every once in a while people use it to a pretty great effect. Um, I'll spring for a slide whistle for you. You're not getting that watch, okay, all right for now, give it, give us a few more years, hopefully. But I did research and get you the best slide whistle there is. It's a good slide whistle. And I will eventually break now, I know, I know we're gonna hear it. This is I like building the suspense. Yeah, yeah, that's where Showman if anything for that BMW though they couldn't use the original vant To black. They had to use different arrangements of the carbon nanotubes to even get something that you could apply as like a car paint, so they had to kind of rearrange things a little bit. They eventually, um, and also something that doesn't have to be grown in a CBD reactor, which is problematic if you want to paint a car. Uh. They eventually did come up with that, and like you said, the thing looks really nice. Um, and it's kind of like you should when you get a safe place to look this thing up. You really need to put your eyes on it to kind of see what you mean. But it is interesting to see a car. I mean, obviously you see a car. They use words like it disappears and it's invisible and it's not invisible, but the details are a bit invisible. Yeah, um. And I mean I don't know if we've said it or not, but the original Vanto Black was clocked in at UM absorbing ninety nine point nine six five percent of visible light. Yea, that oh we did. Okay, I'm sorry I didn't catch that. But the the so that was kind of like the the trend that was there, the benchmark that was set. But apparently some other people have said, we can do better than that. And I guess in September of two thousand nineteen, Chuck, a group from M I T did just that. They came up with a type of black that's actually blacker than Vanto black. And it uses the same technology of carbon nanotubes UM and it is it captures point nine nine five percent of visible light, which makes it officially blacker than Vanto black. And like I was saying, this kind of stuff captures the attention of artists and designers. UM. And there was a an artist named, oh what was her name? She's a German artist named DeMott stribe s t r e b e Is. Did I say that correctly? M hmmm. I might say Streba, but I don't know this way better. Um. She took a diamond, a two million dollar diamond, and had it coated with this new black or black, so it's like a void, a diamond void. It It's just amazing stuff to see this. It just takes over this thing and and and basically plunges it into a black hole. No matter what you coated with Yeah. And if you are redoing your house and you want to have a black office like me, Um, I chose one that you know, now that I look at it, it definitely looks black, but you could argue that there's a little bit of gray to it. Um. If you do want something super black, though, there's an artist named Stuart Simple s E. M P l E. That made to Matt black acrylic paints black two point oh and black three point oh, which are apparently really really black. Yeah they are, and so so I mentioned earlier the artist A Niche Kapoor. Well, A Niche Kapoor and Stuart Simple are in an art war, a good old fashioned art showdown, because Stuart Simple is not very happy that a Niche Kapoor has the market cornered legally on vanta black. So Stuart Simple makes his own pigments and sells them. And if you go by them, you mean went and bought a tube of this, uh this black three dotto today and yeah, and in it when you're buying it, you have to say, I affirm that I'm not a Niche Kapoor, that I'm not an associate of a Niche Kapoor. This is not going to get into the hands of a Niche Kapoor. I'm not buying it for him. Um. You have to like click that box that says all that before you can actually purchase the stuff. Um, which is pretty great. And I was like, a Niche Kapoor sounds kind of familiar. And it turns out we've actually seen his work. Um you mean I don't think you and I have ever seen his work together. Um at the Hirshworm Museum in d C. And he has these like giant eggs and the inside is painted vanta black. And it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life because it really is like you're looking into a black hole. Like if you stuck your hand in, it would just keep going into another dimension, is what it looks like it really is. I think that the Stewart's simple a Niche Kapoor feud, we should warn its own short stuff one day and let's hope it doesn't end in bloodshed. Yes, let's hope. Uh. And well, since we hoped against bloodshed, I think that means we've reached the end of short stuff, don't you chuck? Does that mean we're out short Stuff at m H. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. 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