[meteorite-list] Move over, aerogel!

[MexicoDoug]

Just a note of congratulations to the group of Julia Greer at Caltech 
and Alan Jacobsen, Tobias Schaedler, at HRL Laboratories, et. al.

Aerogel used to be the world's lightest solid and found application 
 from our perspective in the tennis racket Stardust used to trap 
particles from a comet.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Stardust_Dust_Collector_with_aerogel.jpg

Well, vacuum prepared aerogel has a density of about 1.0 milligrams/mL.

Enter: metallic micro-lattice.  Density = 0.85 mg/mL.

"a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness of 100 
nanometers, 1,000 times thinner than a human hair."

It's actually nickel based and is a metal!  On a microscopic level it 
is like a skyscraper's steel skeleton (lattice), and it has a memory to 
spring back to its structure when compressed up to 50 of it's thickness:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2011/11/16/334.6058.962.DC1/1211649s3.wmv

And it looks like a transparent metal!

Unlike aerogel, this one is probably not a dessicant.

Who will be the first listmember to get some of this hot material?

read more here:

http://features.caltech.edu/features/272

Kindest wishes
Doug