 |
Before trying to make something darker than Vantablack, we must understand why we see certain colours. Usually we see any colour because it is the colour reflected by the surface of that body. As for example we see an orange coloured car because the orange coloured body of the car reflect the orange colour portion of the light, absorbing the rest. Similarly a white colour is seen because it reflects most of the light that hits it's surface. In similar fashion a black colour reflects very little light that falls on its surface.
Vantablack is the one of the darkest known material. It absorbs 99.965 % of the visible light. Vantablack was developed by Surrey NanoSystems in the United Kingdom. So how Vantablack is able to absorb such a high percentage of light? It is because Vantablack is composed of a forest of vertical tubes. When light strikes Vantablack, instead of bouncing off, it becomes trapped and is continually deflected amongst the tubes, eventually becoming absorbed and dissipating into heat.
How to make something darker than Vantablack? Well if we go technically, at smaller scale we could design the material of the proposed darker colour with structures that absorb the light and reflect or dissipate very little if any. However only black hole can absorb 100 % of all light entering into it. Even black hole give off Hawking radiation after sometime under certain conditions. But it's still possible to have something made which could be darker than Vanta black. For this, take a box and paint it with black 3.0. After this cover the box with a cover, white on outside and black 3.0 painted on the inside with a square aperture. Although, black 3.0 is not darker than Vantablack but when light enters the aperture of the box coloured with black 3.0, the light keeps on reflecting on the inside of the box and very little is able to escape from the aperture if any, thus giving an illusion of a colour darker than Vantablack.
Although the above experiment gives you an illusion of a colour darker than Vantablack but in reality it's just an illusion. However if we could mimic the effect of the box at smaller scale we could indeed produce a material which could be darker than Vantablack.
More