By: William Brown, scientist at the Resonance Science Foundation

In 2019, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology made headlines when they created the “blackest black” material made from carbon nanotubes—ten times blacker than any material that had been manufactured at that time—a material so black that it had the ability to absorb 99.995% of incident light. Such research in light absorption is not a trivial pursuit or mere aesthetics, there are many technologies that can benefit from maximizing light absorption—for instance, in photovoltaics because of the need to absorb and convert as much light as possible into electricity, or on the interior surface of a light sensor because of the need to minimize unwanted stray light. The physics of light absorption can get quite complex when you get into the details, as what we non-technically consider as “black” is usually not a perfect absorber. Indeed, there are many...

^{By Dr. Inés Urdaneta / Physicist at Resonance Science Foundation}

Electromagnetic spectrum of light 

We are used to the words light and color. In scientific terms, light is made of electromagnetic waves that are mainly radiated from a radiative source (for instance, the sun) and absorbed by an object (absorbed by the electrons in the atoms that make the object, for instance, a T-shirt). An electromagnetic wave traveling through space is an energy oscillation propagating through space in 3 dimensions; traveling, for instance, from A to B along the red curved trajectory (known as circularly polarized motion) shown in the Figure below, depicting the complete movement which forms a helical trajectory. The axes x, y, and z serve as frames of reference for the movement. Note that the helical red curve has a 3D red tubular shadow to emphasize the 3D shape of this whole movement; it is a vortex spiraling helical through space. This red trajectory can be separated into two...