Andrew!
Where are you?
Dain.
Dain I'm down here.
Why are you so small?
I'm just trying to describe
a carbon nanotube.
I've got this whole pool noodle
and everything.
Nope, see the pool noodle.
I'm on the same page.
I-- can you just make yourself big
again please? Fine.
This time Andrew
and I learn about carbon nanotubes,
how they're going to change the world,
and we talked to an artist who
was inspired by the technology.
One thing. I try to spruce it up.
I try to give the people what they want which is flash.
I don't think anyone wants that.
Alright. Well I didn't go to film school.
It's unnatural.
Whatever. Pretend that this is a carbon
nanotube.
A carbon nanotube is a tiny hollow
tube made of
carbon. Each one can be 3500
times smaller than the average human
hair. Discovered in 1991
by Tsuneo Iijima and since
then they've been researched heavily for their variety
of unique uses.
Here why don't we see for ourselves.
That was dramatic.
I'll get you a new one.
Dain, where the hell have you taken us?
We are in the beautiful,
tropical land of Connecticut.
Connecticut?
I quit. I quit the show.
No. Andrew Come on.
They're actually doing some cool things here.
Like what? Mattershift is doing some
really awesome stuff
with carbon nanotube technology.
All right. So can you tell us a little bit about
Mattershift and what you do here?
Yeah. So we're working on a new way of making things
at the molecular level.
The idea is completely recycle
and close loop on fuels
and materials.
Where we can actually take individual molecules
of things you want like fuels
or food or pharmaceuticals
and we can actually pass them down conveyor belts
that have the same size as the molecules we
want and combine them in new ways.
What are those little conveyor belts?
They're nanotubes. They're made all the time by
nature. Like campfires.
Well not but in small quantities
and now we make them specifically for their
properties. And they're very small.
They're about the size of a nanometer
or less and they're made entirely out of carbon atoms.
Like graphene rolled up into a tube.
Like a straw.
A hundred years down the line when
this technology is everywhere what
does that future look like?
What I'm picturing is something like the size of a mini
fridge that essentially can take waste
materials and turn them into useful products
like fuels and building materials
or can pull CO2 out of the air
and turn it into fuels
or building materials. And so when we're hanging out in
the Mars base this box
is going to make everything we need out of the materials
that we have with us.
So you actually have a working prototype of what
we were talking about right?
Yes. One of things we're trying to show is pulling
ethanol fuel out of water.
Right now a tremendous amount of natural gas energy
goes into doing that
and we can reduce that by over 80 percent.
This is a 'Beer' right?
This is a very deadly concentration of ethanol
in water
and that's what you get from fermenting like corn
or sugar cane or woodchips
or something like that.
And it's called a Beer?
It's called a Beer.
It's called a fermenters malt
but it's essentially the same concentration
that you would drink like a double vodka
or a bottle of wine
or something but in this case it's clear
because we just put ethanol
and water together. We actually circulate this beer
past our carbon nanotube membrane.
This is where the technology is.
That's the carbon nanotubes?
Yeah they're on the surface of these polymer
fibres here. How small are they?
They're like 100
times smaller than light.
Than light. Light than a photon?
Than a photon. Wow.
So we used the vacuum to pull the ethanol as a
vapor through this tube
and it goes into the cold trap
and there is the ethanol as a solid.
Wow.
And then later we'll warm it up
and we collect it and we've got some here from yesterday
to show you.
This is mainly ethanol.
It's over 80 percent ethanol.
One way you know it's fuel is it lights on fire.
You want to see? Yeah.
I would love to see it be lit on fire.
Yes absolutely. Well let's do it here.
Well this is where you put in your gasoline tank.
It burns pretty hot.
So stand back.
Oh wow.
Oh.
Nanotechnology.
I feel like I could toast marshmallows.
Perfect.
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UK based company Surrey Nanosystems
has gotten us closer to true black than ever
before. They've actually created a black coating
called 'Vantablack'.
It's a cool name. That absorbs more than 99
percent of all light
leaving a void like blackness
that is eerie to look at.
One square centimeter of this coating can
contain 1 billion carbon
nanotubes.
Here's how it works.
When light hits the forest of carbon nanotubes,
it bounces around inside
those tubes essentially getting trapped
until it dissipates into heat.
That means there's almost no light being
reflected back. The creators of antiblack
sparked a scandal after it sold an exclusive
license to artist Anish Kapoor
and his Kapoor Studios for its use
in art meaning no one else on earth
is allowed to use the original Venta black for
artistic purposes.
And that fact pissed off a lot of artists
and designers who were looking forward to using it.
So much so that artist Stuart Semple
decided to make his own super black
paint. Now we have 'Black 2.0'.
Hi Stewart!
How's it going? What Is Black 2.0?
Black
2 really hatched out of a collaboration
with a load of artists
and it's sort of an open source
paint that we made so that artist could have
a really matte black.
This is like a normal black acrylic
like standard black acrylic
and that is black 2.
Why is having a crazy black black
so important for artists?
You know black is a bit of the Holy Grail.
Artists have after that zero
point no light black for
a very very long time.
And only recently really
an ultra matte black that absorbs
a lot of light has been possible
so it enables a whole
new type of artwork to be made.
And you don't use carbon nanotubes right?
What's the science behind this?
The cosmetics industry mattefying
makeups to absorb light,
new acrylic polymers
and the best most stable pigments,
we've put them together to make a super
loaded ultra pigmented
paint that reflects 1 percent
less light than the black photographic
standard. Which is the
sort of benchmark if you like for visual
optical blacks.
So Andrew it seems like there's a light at
the end of these tiny tiny tiny tunnels.
Eh? You sure are right about that Dain.
You sure are right about that.
Onward! It's already dinner time?
Do you think the
Black 3.0 is just going to be like a
hole in space
and time?
Probably.
Next time we're going to figure out exactly
what block chain technology can do.
Stay tuned for new episodes,
be sure to like our page
and share the video while you're at it.
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