"Frozen Smoke" Will Change the World

A MIRACLE material for the 21st century could protect your home against bomb blasts, mop up oil spillages and even help man to fly to Mars.

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Is this more alien technology that has been reverse engineered by the government? It is being used by NASA and similiar companies. This discovery was sitting around for six decades when NASA decides to start using it. Seems a bit odd doesn't it?

Definitely cool. A friend of mine on somethingawful.com had gotten ahold of a sample.

Yea this stuff is awesome, I remember seeing it on some learning channel which was back in the late 90's. Although it is amazing, I doubt we can credit the aliens for this tech.

Aerogel is nicknamed “frozen smoke” and is made by extracting water from a silica gel, then replacing it with gas such as carbon dioxide.

[edit on 20-8-2007 by PontiacWarrior]

This stuff has been around for ages. It's no 'miracle of the 21st century.' I remember watching something on TV years ago giving a detailed account of how to make it.
It's a pity it is so expensive, as it would be perfect for making surfboards.

reply to post by ninthaxis


He ninthaxis, They talked about aerogel on Coast to Coast radio last night. Hard to imagine that the substance could have been ignored since the 30s? and be all that good. I would think it would be brittle if it is made from silica gel. Sounds like a great substance for insulating houses esp. if it is compressible like the fiberglass stuff is. One problem is that the patent is probably run out so anyone could make it and no large company will touch it. At least that is how it goes in the drug industry.

Awesome stuff, I remeber seeing it years back too. Wonder if they found any useful uses for it. Here is a video of Aerogel.

Originally posted by watch_the_rocksIt's a pity it is so expensive, as it would be perfect for making surfboards.

Interesting.. Not sure if it's strong enough though, it's a lot more fragile than the foam inner of current surf boards - it has a tendency to shatter with impacts..

The glass around the styrofoam is pretty strong - try sanding it down to fix a ding. It should provide a protective shell to the aerogel, while the aerogel supports the glass. But yeah, if the stuff shatters then it won't do much good. I've had a board snapped in half by the lip of a 1/2 foot wave. People tend to forget that a cubic metre of water weighs 1 tonne.

[edit on 21/8/2007 by watch_the_rocks]

Is this more alien technology that has been reverse engineered by the government? It is being used by NASA and similiar companies. This discovery was sitting around for six decades when NASA decides to start using it. Seems a bit odd doesn't it?

Im a big champion on human intelligence, wisdom and ingenuity.

Please, whenever humans make an advancement does it have to be reverse engineered alien technology?

Cant we just finally think that we are smart?

Id venture to say that we would probably be equal with Alien races in technology. We just specialise in different fields.

I think the reason why it isn't being used more is that it's still difficult and costly to produce Aerogel in any great quantities, and few companies are producing it..

This keeps it expensive to start playing with, especially in any great quantities.

www.unitednuclear.com...

There's also a bunch of it on eBay usually..

I think the news now is that there are new variations of the original Aerogel which have different properties, so you never know, a bit further down the line, you might well get that Aerogel surfboard

[edit on 21-8-2007 by Stoo]

They make all different sorts of aerogels, by the way, not just the silica sort.

For instance, a carbon aerogel is used to make supercapacitors.

It's interesting, we have been playing with it for water filtration, but found cheaper alternatives that did as well.

Wasn't this the stuff they used to collect particles from a passing asteriod? If memory serves they shot a ball bearing at it and this aero gel stuff was arranged in a sort of tennis racquet thing that caught the particles causing very little damage to them, the whole thing then returned to earth.

Its a wonder that something with so much potential, hasn't been exploited to beyond yet.

At $159.00 for a small pc like that.... I wonder why no-one else is going after it.

Originally posted by Now_Then
Wasn't this the stuff they used to collect particles from a passing asteriod? If memory serves they shot a ball bearing at it and this aero gel stuff was arranged in a sort of tennis racquet thing that caught the particles causing very little damage to them, the whole thing then returned to earth.

Naw all they did was park the probe in the comets tail and used the aerogel to capture particles. The one where they shot a copper ball was another mission alltogether. The mission was a failure due to landing difficulties(more like shattering the aerogel cells into a trillion pieces when it crashed)

[edit on 21-8-2007 by sardion2000]

reply to post by Tom Bedlam
Hi Tom, The aerogel that I recall from back in the '80s was a ring compound with a heavy metal atom (Hg?) at the center. It was extremely light, opaque and cost prohibitive. Remember that one?

Hm. Not ringing a bell - there are *coff*aerogel radar absorbent materials*coff* with metal ions in, but not mercury that I recall.

There's a neat aerogel light source with zinc in it that's blown full of tritium which becomes trapped in the gel when it hardens - a cube of light that will last for decades.

The article also states (I think or I read it elsewhere) that this stuffs super absorbent. Possible uses include cleaning up after oil tanker spills in the ocean, super absorbent papers towels (j/k). Plus the whole withstanding a kg of dynamite. That makes for some decent shielding against IED's wouldn't it?

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam


There's a neat aerogel light source with zinc in it that's blown full of tritium which becomes trapped in the gel when it hardens - a cube of light that will last for decades.

Now that would be cool. Any links to that?

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
This stuff has been around for ages. It's no 'miracle of the 21st century.' I remember watching something on TV years ago giving a detailed account of how to make it.
It's a pity it is so expensive, as it would be perfect for making surfboards.

Yeah, it has been around for a long time. But it can't be too expensive anymore if they are using to insulate jackets, sleeping bags, shoes, and even houses. It's about time the price came down on it. I remember when it was first used for the Stardust mission and one cubic inch of the stuff was thousands of dollars. They should start using it in automobiles to protect passengers in the event of an accident.

reply to post by pavil


I can find a few places but the best was a Sandia newsletter in Sept 1990. I don't know if there is an online copy.

Look here, and here.

They were small, blindingly intense, and good for 20 years or so. There was a project between EG&G, Sandia and LLNL to pump little lasers with them that didn't need any electrical power. You can find the gubmint's patents on that all over the place.