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The Blackest Black Material (Vantablack, Etc.)

blessmycottonsocks

Antediluvian
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Man injured after falling into Vantablack hole in art gallery.

An Italian tourist fell 2.5 metres and had to be hospitalised after stepping into the "Descent into Limbo" art feature in a Porto gallery.
Painted in Vantablack, the hole looks just like a flat black disk on the floor.

hole.png


https://allthatsinteresting.com/anish-kapoor-descent-into-limbo
 
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Trevp666

Don't blame me - I didn't cook it.
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If it takes 2 men 2 days to dig a hole, how long will it take one man to dig half a hole?
 

SimonBurchell

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Trevp666

Don't blame me - I didn't cook it.
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Depends on how deep and wide the hole is to be?
Well the answer is that there is no such thing as 'half a hole'.
 

Sid

Justified & Ancient
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Well the answer is that there is no such thing as 'half a hole'.
When a 'particular hole' has measure, then I would imagine that it can be said that you can have half, even if you still 'call' it a hole? (It's just a play on words!) :yeahthat:
Half of a whole hole.png
 
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Coal

The Ultimate Skepticus
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If vantablack absorbs so completely all light, does it not get steadily warmer? Or is it re-emitting at some non-visible frequency? (maybe IR)
 

SimonBurchell

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If vantablack absorbs so completely all light, does it not get steadily warmer? Or is it re-emitting at some non-visible frequency? (maybe IR)
I believe it emits the light as heat, if I remember right. Light gets caught in a lot of nanotubes, bounces around until it is absorbed and emitted as heat.
 

PeteByrdie

Privateer in the service of Princess Frideswide
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If vantablack absorbs so completely all light, does it not get steadily warmer? Or is it re-emitting at some non-visible frequency? (maybe IR)
My understanding is It's emitted in infra-red. So, heat. Carbon nanotubes are extraordinary conductors of heat, so while they might not get especially hot, the surface upon which they're placed may do, depending on the properties of that surface. Having said that, we're not talking about huge amounts of extra heat. Vantablack seems shockingly black to us, but it doesn't absorb all that much more light than just an ordinary black surface.
 

Trevp666

Don't blame me - I didn't cook it.
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Or is it re-emitting at some non-visible frequency?
It absorbs light but emits sound in higher frequencies than human ears can detect, so whenever it is exposed to light, all the dogs in the neighbourhood start barking.
That and the smell of marmite.
 

MercuryCrest

The Severed Head of a Great Old One.
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James_H

And I like to roam the land
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I am actually tempted to buy a tube of Semple's black and try some stuff out myself. It's not as black as vantablack but it's still very, very black.
Follow up: I got one a while back and it's rubbish, it hardly even looks black. More of a dark grey. I'm fairly convinced that Stuart Semple is just drumming up a fake feud to advance his career seeing as he's not getting very far with his artwork. In other words, he's running a scam or at least a series of publicity stunts, and his products don't live up to his claims.

But don't just take my word for it! Check out this Japanese optical equipment company who did a range of tests demonstrating that Semple's black is inferior to other widely available black paints, then got so enraged that they made their own, much blacker paint.

https://www.ko-pro.black/app/flex/blog/preview/534232631
 

brownmane

off kilter
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I am definitely non-plussed by this supposed feud. Vantablack is not a paint. How can anyone say that they can compare any paint to something that is not paint?
 
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