[Gamecock]

Lot of articles about this in the news section of Google today.

Looks to be the duct tape of the 21st century.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Lot of articles about this in the news section of Google today."

Also lots of articles already posted on FR about this subject, which is NOT new. Aerogels have been "gee-whiz" in the general scieintific and engineering mags for at least ten years.

[litehaus]

"Have you suffered from the New Aerogel product?"

Contact Swindel and Cheatum, Attys ay Law for your "Fair Share" of the 400 Million dollar settlement we are seeking on Your behalf! Call today!

[Larry Lucido]

I prefer denser material. No grenade yet has penetrated my Christmas fruitcake bunker.

[Calvin Locke]

Is this the same stuff that was used to collect comet dust?

If so, wasn't it invented back in the 1930s?

[fremont_steve]

Well - it many ways it is. I just read about a completely different application of this stuff to build what are called “Ultra Capacitors” These are storage devices that can hold huge amounts of electricity - and they have the advantage over batteries of having 1/10-1/100 the recharge time and 300,000-400,000 recharge cycle life times.

The problem is they still only have about 1/10 the capacity of batteries. If they can move into the same arena as Lead-acid - then electric cars become practical.

You can literally think of driving up to a recharge station and take 10 minutes to recharge your car instead of 4-8 hours.