Scientists at UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories, and Caltech have made history by inventing the lightest material on Earth.
Made out of 90% nickel and consisting of 99.9% air, the new material, dubbed "ultralight metallic microlattice," is light enough to be balanced atop a dandelion without crushing the fuzzy seeds.
The team presented its finidings in the November 18th issue of the peer-review magazine Science. In the article, lead author Tobias Shandler said, "The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair."
As of now there are no clear uses for the new material. We think they should first work on giving it a new, catchier name.
[via LA Times]