Aerogel is fixed, but because it's so low, it's the density of the gas. Aerogel is a new kind of magic material in the 21st century. Not only can aerogel protect your home from bombs, oil spills and even help humans fly to Mars.

As the world's lightest solid, aerogel can withstand the impact of a 1kg blast and the heat generated by a blowtorch of up to 1,300 degrees Celsius. Now, scientists are developing new USES for aerogel that could be used in the next generation of tennis racquets to the super-insulated space suits of Mars exploration astronauts. The research is as important as the invention of artificial gum in the 1930s, carbon fibre in the 1980s and silicone in the 1990s. "It's really an amazing material," said mercurie canadzis, a professor of chemistry at northwestern university. It is denser than anything known to man, yet so powerful. Aerogel has a wide range of USES, from filtering sewage to insulating from heat, even in the jewelry industry.

The aerogel is being tested for future use in bulletproof homes and military vehicle armor. In the lab, a sheet of metal coated with a 6mm thick aerogel would be able to survive a direct explosion. Aerogels can also be found everywhere in daily life. Dunlop sports equipment, for example, has developed a range of squash and tennis racquets reinforced with aerogel, which is said to serve more powerfully than normal racquets. In the first half of this year, 66-year-old nottinghamshire resident Bob stock, who became the first person in the UK to use aerogel to insulate a property, said: "it's a very good insulator. It's an incredible change." Climbers have also benefited from aerogels. "The only problem is that my feet feel too hot," said Annie palmer, a mountaineer who climbed mount Everest last year in her aerogel insoles and an aerogel pad in her sleeping bag.

Although aerogel is classified as a solid, 99% of its composition is gas, which makes it cloudy. Scientists say this because aerogel has millions of pores and creases, and once a cubic centimetre of aerogel spreads out, it fills a space the size of a football field. The nanosized pores in aerogel not only collect various pollutants like a sponge, but also act as air holes. The researchers believe that some variants of aerogel made from platinum could also be used to accelerate hydrogen production, which could then be used to make hydrogen fuel. Aerogel, also known as "frozen smog", extracts water from silica gel and replaces it with substances such as carbon dioxide. The result is a substance that is both resistant to ultra-high temperatures and able to absorb pollutants such as natural oil.

As the world's lightest solid, aerogel is officially listed in the guinness book of world records. The new material has a density of only 3 milligrams per cubic centimeter (3 grams per liter), one thousandth of the density of glass. The new aerogel, developed by Dr Jones of NASA's jet propulsion laboratory, consists mainly of pure silica. In the process, liquid silicon compounds are first mixed with a liquid solvent that quickly vaporizes to form a gel, which is then dried in an instrument similar to a pressure cooker and heated and depressurized to form a porous spongy structure. In this way, Dr Jones ended up with an aerogel that had 99.8% of the air in it. These properties of aerogel have many USES in space exploration. Aerogels are used on the Russian space station mir and the American Mars pathfinder. Articles come from the Internet

Aerogel equipment