I Tease because I Love

Researchers in New York reported this month that they have created a paper-thin material that absorbs 99.955 percent of the light that hits it, making it by far the darkest substance ever made—about 30 times as dark as the government's current standard for blackest black.

The material, made of hollow fibers, is a Roach Motel for photons—light checks in, but it never checks out. By voraciously sucking up all surrounding illumination, it can give those who gaze on it a dizzying sensation of nothingness.

“It's very deep, like in a forest on the darkest night,” said Shawn-Yu Lin, a scientist who helped create the material at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. “Nothing comes back to you. It's very, very, very dark.

“Admittedly,” Lin said, “we're still decades of research and dozens of shades away from Yaphet Kotto, the Platonic ideal. This, our best effort, places us somewhere around a 4 on the Kotto scale. Maximum Kotto-itude exists at 10. So, yeah, we've got a lot of work ahead of us.

“But that shouldn't diminish what we've been able to accomplish, here. There's no shame in finishing second to Yaphet, no shame at all.”