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What Is Frozen Smoke?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Science

Apparently a highly usable, remarkably light solid that’s made up of approximately 99.8% air.

Aerogel, one of the world’s lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C.

Scientists are working to discover new applications for the substance, ranging from the next generation of tennis rackets to super-insulated space suits for a manned mission to Mars.

Aerogel is nicknamed “frozen smoke” and is made by extracting water from a silica gel, then replacing it with gas such as carbon dioxide. The result is a substance that is capable of insulating against extreme temperatures and of absorbing pollutants such as crude oil.

And did you know you used to be able to buy the stuff? This website is apparently sold out, but they were selling vials of it!

Here’s a pic of its heat resistance…

Here’s how much weight it can hold…

And here’s a guy who wants to make sweet love to a cube of it.

I now pronounce you husband and Aerogel.

For more info, you can visit the Aerogel page at Wikipedia.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “What Is Frozen Smoke?”

gerryf Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Yes, neat stuff…wanted to get some a while back when my son was doing a science project on the NASA Stardust project. Stardust was a NASA project in which the agency directed a space probe through the tail of a comet…the aerogel was used to capture the “dust” from the tail, and return it to earth.

The probe was launched in 1999 (shows you how long this stuff has been around) and returned to earth in Jan 2006
Center of Attention » The Moderate Voice Says:
August 21st, 2007 at 7:49 am
[...] non-political post by Justin Gardner, for those (like me) who are interested in super-cool science, a.k.a., card-carrying members of the [...]

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