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Comment by axaxs | Hacker News Reader

I was thinking about car/plane applications. At first thought, it's "that reflects no light that's a terrible idea". Thinking further, the absolute absence of anything itself stands out from a normal background, day or night. Would be a bit interesting to see.

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Check out the Vantablack BMW X6 (https://www.bmw.com/en/design/the-bmw-X6-vantablack-car.html)

For some reason having a car that can appear 2 dimensional at times doesn't seem like the best plan to me, unless you have great insurance.

I'm curious... would that car get incredibly hot parked in the sun?

Yes it will head up until the black body radiation equals the incoming solar energy :)

Maybe for a bit, then the paint would melt off. It's not rated for getting wet... or hot.

These things have applications for stealth aircraft as they often absorb radar as well as visible light. But even for visible light, if you're looking at something painted vantablack in broad daylight, you only see a silhouette--much like WWI "Dazzle" camouflage, it's very difficult for the brain to process what you're looking at.

That's very interesting, I was thinking about stealth bombers. Do you think it would have applications in say, military uniforms? I wonder how it compares to digital camo, mirror based camo, etc in regards to detection.

Carbon nanotubes are similar to asbestos fibers, so it's not something that you'd want to put in a garment.

Rapidly moving lead will kill you faster than asbestos, there might be a few tactical uses for such a garment.

> Rapidly moving lead will kill you faster than asbestos

As will rapidly moving copper, or rapidly moving depleted uranium, or even a rapidly moving wooden stick with a stone point on it. :)

Likely better to put on txtical equipment, such as guns and boots?

That's assuming the military cares about the long term effects.

> Do you think it would have applications in say, military uniforms?

During the first gulf war they gave us some jackets that absorbed the wavelengths the night-vision goggles could see so you'd just see a human shaped void which kind of stands out a lot more than a regular person -- not the best of plans.

I asked this exact question last time we were talking about vanta - and several people more knowledgable on stealth than me, said that they would not...

"if you're looking at something painted vantablack in broad daylight, you only see a silhouette"

If you scroll down the linked page, there is a photo of a vantablack BMW taken with a flashlight and a cell phone, and it simply looks like a dull gray when some light is pointed at it:

https://jalopnik.com/bmw-flexed-on-us-with-its-amazing-paint...

It seems like common sense to me that if you're looking at a picture on the internet that is staged just so, it is trivial to get all the "black" pixels to be exactly zero, but that doesn't tell you much about the quality of the material or how it would look to a person.

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