There is a LOT of material on silica aerogels. Just google and you’ll probably get more than you ever wanted. But I haven’t seen anything recently to say that they’re substantively different than they were a couple of years ago. They were invented in the 1930s on a bet where some egg head bet another one that he couldn’t remove the water without destroying the gel. I think that supercritical ethanol was used, but I’m not sure about this. A friend of my roommate in grad school in the material science department was screwing around with them and would never let anyone touch his gels becuse he said they were way too easy to break. First you’d give it a little pinch, and then squeeze it a bit harder and then when nothing happened you’d squeeze it harder still and, pop, it was dust in the carpet.
well. Whether it’s there PR group or whether something has changed they are all of the sudden all over the news in the last few day.