I just received the most awesome thing in the mail from NASA: a block of aerogel incased in one of the original boxes (see the inscribed number on the box) that held a block of aerogel for NASA’s Stardust spacecraft. Aerogel was used in the spacecraft to capture pieces of interstellar dust by impacting a comet. As you can tell from the photographs below, aerogel is not very easy to photograph: it’s the lightest solid on Earth: 99.8% of it is made of air. It’s also like fiberglass, hence I used plastic wrap to handle it carefully.
Jealous? There’s actually a way for you to look at pieces of interstellar dust in blocks of aerogel while helping further scientific discoveries at the same time! Stardust@home is a project where anyone can go and collaborate with scientists to find pieces of interstellar dust in images of aerogel – there’s simply so much aerogel to go through that it’s more than any one person could do in a lifetime. So, I recommend signing up!
Update: apparently there’s also open source ways to create your own aerogel (though, the materials can be dangerous/cancerous, so please be careful).
8 Comments
Faaeteete Lene
October 7, 2011That’s totally awesome i didn’t even know such a thing existed! Way cool :)
Christopher Lunsford
October 7, 2011Almost looks photoshop’d, wow!
Henny Swan
October 7, 2011Incredible, it’s as if you have a ghost sitting in the palm of your hand.
Will
October 8, 2011There’s a great open source of information about aerogel at http://www.aerogel.org, with recipes and DIY info.
Ariel Waldman
October 8, 2011@Will – awesome – thanks so much for sharing this resource! Maybe we will try it out at http://sf.sciencehackday.com this year!
Mark Jaquith
October 9, 2011They just covered aerogel on Penn & Teller’s latest TV series. Had a 1700° F flamethrower hitting it on one side, and a scientist touching the other side with his bare palm. Impressive.
What does it feel like? It is squishy?
Tom
December 8, 2011It’s like holding a hand full steam! Very cool!
emrah
December 16, 2011you’r lucky! :)