A team of material scientists from Northwestern University figured out how to make hair dye in various shades of grey, all the way to a very, very black black, out of graphene sheets. Read the rest

When Nietzche suggested staring into the abyss, he meant an over-steeped cup of Barry's Gold Blend. Read the rest

Anish Kapoor -- last seen in these parts when he apparently insisted that it was illegal for people in Chicago to take pictures in their public park if they captured a sculpture that had been donated to the city -- got a nanotech company called Nanosystems to promise him the exclusive right to paint with their Vantablack pigment, which uses carbon nanotubes to absorb 99.96% of visible light. Read the rest

A group at Saudi Arabia's King Abdulla University of Science and Technology have developed a new carbon-nanotube-based material that absorbs 98 to 99 percent of light between 400 and 1,400nm, from all angles, making even blacker than Rice University's 2008 none-more-black, Boston and Duke's 2008 none-more-black and Leiden University's 2009 none-more-black. That's pretty fucking black. Read the rest