Aerogel a new material that was designed to collect comet dusk is one of the most powerful materials created ever. It can support thousands of times it’s own weight, and blocks an incredible amount of heat. What’s even more impressive is the fact that aerogel is composed of 99.8% air, making it 1,000 times less dense than glass.

Despite aerogel being fairly expensive, it could be one of the most significant materials of this century. In recent news scientists from Ohio and Arizona are creating aerogels that can absorb oil from spills or stop pollutants from ever reaching the environment.

“It would be put on top of the water, where it will float on the surface and absorb oil and then, just like a kitchen sponge, you could squeeze the oil out,” said Matt Gawryla, a scientist at Ohio-based AeroClay Inc. AeroClay is working to commercialize the aerogel technology originally developed at Case Western Reserve University.

If this technology could be used to clean oil spills in the Gulf Coast of Mexico this could turn out to be one of the most influential technologies used to clean a disaster.

via [Discovery]