Blacker Than The Blackest Black

You want black? This is black: New material pushes the boundary of blackness.

U.S. researchers said on Tuesday they have made the darkest material on Earth, a substance so black it absorbs more than 99.9 percent of light.

Made from tiny tubes of carbon standing on end, this material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness.

And the material is close to the long-sought ideal black, which could absorb all colors of light and reflect none... Basic black paint, by comparison, has a reflective index of 5 percent to 10 percent.

It looks something like this, only blacker: