My Pet Cloud

I had another moment of geek euphoria in discussing my latest science article with my feature writing professor. I am writing a piece on a magical material called aerogel, which is kind of like hard foam, and it is the lightest solid on Earth (officially named so by the Guinness Book of World Records). Okay, you might not be impressed yet, but please sit down for this next little factoid: It is transparent! That’s right, it is like a super-lightweight glass. In addition to being porous and having some wack acoustic and kinetic properties, it also happens to be an excellent insulating material, so it has all sorts of possibilities for use as insulating glass in greenhouses, solar swimming pool heaters, and satellites. This January, NASA just retrieved a space capsule called Stardust that collected comet dust in aerogel so perfectly it made a bunch of astronomers weep with joy during a press conference. Clearly, it is one of the hottest things in materials science these days.

Really, this stuff will blow your mind. Please refer immediately to the pictures posted below to get an idea of how weird it looks. Chunks of aerogel look completely alien, like some sort of ghost foam. People are so captivated by its mystique that they have given it names like frozen fog, solid smoke, and (my favorite) pet clouds. There is a funny description on the website of some researchers who I might interview in which they say that your first encounter with aerogel goes something like this: You cup it carefully in your hand and comment on how lightweight and translucent it is. You gingerly press it to see if it is flexible. Upon noting with surprise that it is strong, you press it harder. At this point, the aerogel shatters into a thousand pieces, and a look of panic comes over your face. You’ve killed it! Just so I can experience the feel of it myself, I am tempted to spend the 25 bucks it costs to get a lab in Wisconsin to send me a piece the size of a stack of about 6 quarters.

Take a gander at these pics snagged from U. Wisconsin, NASA, and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab:

[Image from: http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~aerogel/aboutaerogel.html]

[Image from: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/photo/aerogel.html]

[Image from: http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/aerogel-insulation.html]