January 27, 2021 • 12 mins
How black is vantablack? About as black as you could imagine.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
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
(00:25):
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,
(00:47):
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
(01:07):
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.
(01:28):
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
(01:49):
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
(02:11):
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?
(02:32):
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
(02:53):
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,
(03:15):
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
(03:37):
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
(04:17):
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
(04:38):
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
(04:58):
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
(05:19):
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
(05:43):
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,
(06:07):
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
(06:28):
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
(06:51):
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
(07:12):
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
(07:35):
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
(07:58):
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.
(08:24):
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
(08:46):
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
(09:09):
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
(09:29):
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
(09:51):
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
(10:13):
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
(10:34):
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
(10:55):
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
(11:18):
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.
(11:41):
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.
(12:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for My heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
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
(00:25):
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,
(00:47):
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
(01:07):
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.
(01:28):
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
(01:49):
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
(02:11):
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?
(02:32):
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
(02:53):
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,
(03:15):
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
(03:37):
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
(04:17):
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
(04:38):
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
(04:58):
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
(05:19):
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
(05:43):
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,
(06:07):
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
(06:28):
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
(06:51):
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
(07:12):
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
(07:35):
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
(07:58):
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.
(08:24):
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
(08:46):
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
(09:09):
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
(09:29):
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
(09:51):
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
(10:13):
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
(10:34):
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
(10:55):
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
(11:18):
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.
(11:41):
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.
(12:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for My heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
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