Company says it's created the world's blackest black with carbon nanotubes

Black may not be, it turns out, the darkest shade — at least not black as we know it. British tech company Surrey Nanosystems says it's developed the world's blackest material: made of carbon nanotubes, it can absorb 99.96 percent of light that hits it. Its developers say that to the human eye, the material — called Vantablack — completely erases any features on a surface, becoming simply a void. "It's like black, like a hole, like there's nothing there. It just looks so strange," chief technical officer Ben Jensen tells The Independent. That's because the dense coating of carbon nanotubes, rolled sheets of carbon atoms like the one seen above, are used to create a lattice that absorbs virtually all light as it's refracted around the tubes.