this piece right in my hand is the lightest and lowest density solid in the world this is an AEL as its name suggest it's a gel composed of 99.8% air looking like frozen smoke it's only 1.74 G when I pick it up I feel like I'm holding a piece of the sky it's so light that even soap bubbles can lift it despite its weight it can withstand extreme temperatures from - 275° c to 6 50° C and provides a protection against heat unlike anything else on Earth however even with a small pressure applied by my finger the aerogel shatters into thousands of pieces and turns to dust but what's surprising is that if I take those aerogel dust and apply it to any surface like my body it becomes 100% hydrophobic it makes me completely waterproof on top of that this dust also forms new non-brittle foamlike aerogel Composites which can be utilized in extreme applications requiring protection Arrow gels can be in different shapes given that they are 99% air can you guess the kind of sound would an arrow gel [Music] make it's like an empty can dropping onto a steel surface very metallic quite different from what most of you might expect I'm at the solar core facility in in Oregon and I'll be conducting experiments to test the Aero gel's most incredible properties so aerogel is this really amazing material it's the lowest thermal conductive solid in existence or the best insulation in the universe this is the same stuff Nasa uses to insulate spacecraft uh like the Mars rovers it's like nothing it's like nothing it's the lightest solid in existence as well what is it made of it's just 9 99% air in this case that other 1% or so is amorphous silica most of you may be seeing this material for the first time in this video however aerogel was introduced into our lives about 100 years ago as a result of a bet between two scientists the BET was to replace all the liquid in silica gel with gas without destroying its form after continuous exploration kler finally solved this problem by using a process called super critical drying and super critical drying you have to get the material to its critical point which is really high heat and really high pressure and you need to pull all that liquid out without collapsing the structure uh of the Jell-O at the end of the drying process what we have is only a three-dimensional porous framework of silica filled with air the pores are only a couple nanometers in thickness to put that into perspective the average pore size is around 110,000 the width of a human air so you can think that I'm holding trapped air where the molecules are stopped one by one in the pores and they're almost unable to transmit heat sound and light so you're seeing some water and arel you see how it's hydrophobic oh yeah ael's insulation capabilities are not its only remarkable property it also exhibits both hydrophilic and hydrophobic characteristics how is it possible to show you how hydrophobic AEL is I'm going to perform a simple yet impressive experiment let's div it so this happens because it is hydrophobic right that's correct doesn't get wet all right moment of truth now we're going to sprinkle some aerogel powder on the water notice how the aerogel doesn't sink it's literally floating on the surface creating a barrier I'll put it in the water it's in the water now thanks to the aerogel super hyd phobic properties the match is still dry and lit wow it's amazing even after stirring the aerogel powder does not mix with water molecules particles are not getting wet at all trying to scoop up the water is completely useless only the aerogel powder comes out with the spoon look the spoon is completely submerged but it's completely dry I'm going to put some SP p on I wonder what would happen if I apply it to my whole body would I be waterproof wow that's pretty cool that's awesome these ball-shaped droplets are not actually touching my hand there is a layer of aerogel powder between my skin and the water looks amazing wow go with my entire hand wow feels like magic yeah really is but what we will see when I cover my whole body with these particles will blow our minds since it's on my hand these particles completely dry my hand out here we go thank you cuz it just takes all the oil out of your skin we have these two setups on one side we have this mini gummy Burger which we will expose directly to the Flames of this bunson burner and on the other side this mini gummy Burger is protected by and arrow gel you see the intense hit here let's start right I I can see the changes over here this one started melting and the bottom is already dissolving there's no difference here my God this one is half burned already no action going on here yeah as you see this setup was much more effective in terms of protecting this hamburger and this one is on smoke you see the difference if this insulation is really that good if you're using it to insulate spacecraft why isn't it used to insulate everything here on Earth right from buildings to apparel turns out it has one major problem if you poke it uh and feel free to go ahead it'll shatter into a th little pieces with a little pressure look how easily it turns into dust I love that that's beautiful the challenge with aroel uh since the beginning of time has been that this stuff is super brittle uh and that's what we do at oros Labs or solar core how do you make it not brittle so that you could use it in whatever application so this is the solution you came up with that's correct so this is a closed cell foam combined with aerogel closed cell Foams are made from silica substance with a structure consisting of tiny sealed air pockets before moving to the flamethrower test and test it on my entire body we'll make one small trial with this foam if that falls I have to take my hand immediately yeah I'm I'm quick you ready you can crank it up as much as you want so you're seeing the uh impact on it so it's very cold here I can touch it as much as I want but here it's it's also cold it doesn't keep heat yeah yeah but this one is hot it melted look look at the U shape of it my shield is actually made of exactly same blanket as this one this is how thick it is is thinner than my finger this is the flamethrower yeah how big is the flame that's coming out of this Weapon 5 to 6 ft so the thickness of The Shield is A4 of an inch the framework looks a lot bigger but if you see the shield itself it's very very thin can we push it to its limits we will test the aerogel Shield by heating it to the maximum temperature that propane gas can reach you ready I'm ready w w oh I can feel some heat from the side but nothing from the center can you get closer to me that's as close as I want him to get I can still touch it FL is coming around FL is coming around that's probably good yeah the average temperature of the Flames was around 1, 1200° C before moving on to the most dangerous experiment yet I have to show how aerogel blocks noise too we have a box here that we lined with a solar core aerogel foam let's put the speaker inside this box and see how aerogel foam works okay let's start all [Music] right so the rating is about 75 [Music] yeah now it is around 95 yeah it's about right even without the music they there's still a lot of noise in this room you can see that it is about 50 without the music so we can say that it blocks 50% of the noise for those unfamiliar liquid nitrogen is extremely cold at a temperature of about1 196° C how safe do you think this is what happens if I touch the liquid nitrogen without gloves it wouldn't be great if it came in contact with your skin would freeze your skin then my hand will be shattered it's exactly right we're going to hear a really loud noise at first um and so don't don't worry if there's loud noise it's so cold that it can freeze almost anything on contact before using liquid nitrogen on myself with my aerogel insulated jacket let's see what this liquid nitrogen can do to something that's not protected by AEL for comparison so this is the light and frost effect there's such a great temperature difference between liquid nitrogen and the floor that it literally can't get absorbed our next item on the list a bunch of parsley but this time instead of submerging it we'll directly spray liquid nitrogen on [Applause] it w so I'm going to dip this in now we're going to see what liquid nitrogen can do with a thicker and denser item all right let's drop this one 2 3 wow before trying it out on me I'm sending off a piece of chicken in liquid nitrogen for a few minutes to see what effect it might have on real meat and Bone and we're going to see what happens to this chicken wow where is the chicken where is the even the bones are shattered this could be so dangerous then that's pretty dangerous what I have witnessed is both mind-blowing and also worrying because now I'll be the next experimental subject now it's my turn to withstand the intense cold of liquid nitrogen behind me Mike is ready to spray the liquid nitrogen directly at me okay you guys ready 5 four three two 1 this is amazing I don't feel it just on my pants because some droplets came to my pants but that's all right for my upper body I don't feel anything amazing this product uses solar cor foam which is our proprietary product it's the world's first flexible and durable aerogel composite so it is a combination of the silica aerogel that we spent so much time playing with today and Clos cell foam so you get the amazing thermal performance of aerogel uh that's why it works so well in the jacket but you get the flexibility in the durability of close cell foam because remember that's why aoel struggled so much in the past it's been super brittle yeah uh so we found a way and patented a way to make aerogel super flexible and super durable yeah and it's usable applicable on our daily life that's exactly right we are near Trum Lake as you see this ice is covering the entire Lake I'm going to apply particles of AEL on my body get in the water and stay dry so no health problems right no okay feeling okay today yeah you've obviously been in the water before cold water y okay perfect we have everything else set up just in case pressure3 I have a bucket of powdered silica aerogel and I'm evenly covering my whole body with that let's see if it can keep me dry even [Music] underwater I'm completely submerging my body [Music] now I am dry this is Miracle guys particles are blocking the uh water coming onto my skin still nothing nothing look at my leg in the water for quite some time and it's dry there are droplets on my leg let's get these out of my leg I I don't even feel I don't even need that gel that we use today is 100% silica aerogel which is one of the most prevalent minerals in the Earth's crust we're getting out any remaining aerogel particles just to make sure that there's nothing disturbing the ecosystem the water was kind of dark and muddy that's why we couldn't see how my body looked underwater I will get inside a pool now and you'll see how it actually looks underwater aerogel particles cause a thin gray layer because they trapped tiny air bubbles on my body these air bubbles reflect Skylight giving my skin a shiny silvery [Music] appearance you can notice some of these air bubbles coming off my legs and rise to the water surface air on my skin makes me feel lighter in the water completely dry how is that possible let's try it again [Music] it's raining heavily now but I don't get W yeah I might be the only person caught in the rain completely covered in hydrophobic aerogel particles if you look at it carefully there are rain droplets on the surface of the uh pool of water that means rain water and the pool water never meet there's a layer of Arrow gel between pool and rain water just going to apply this a gel on it I feel like it's getting wet no way inside there is water but outside it's completely dry what the heck it's like uh I'm holding a bottle of water the a gel powder that I applied onto my body was hydrophobic but this one is hydrophilic watch what happens when I drop water on this air gel it's complete completely unusable the damage is impossible to be undone the feeling of the texture is a lot different think of this like a small sponge it can absorb 25 times of its weight as this type of aerogel can absorb moisture from the air they are used in museums to protect artifacts or to safely store medicines without exposing them to humidity last but not least ael's Nano pores are even way smaller than the visible light the visible light ranges from 380 nanom to 750 nanom while the ael's pores are only between 20 to 40 nanom wide shorter wavelength particles Blues purples UV light get scattered when they hit aerogel and that's what causes aerogel to look blue same reason the sky looks blue it's called ra scattering when we expose an aerogel to ultraviolet light which has the shortest wavelengths it scatters the light better making the aerogel appear opaque now when we switch to infrared light which has the longest wavelengths of all it passes right through the AOG gel making it appear completely transparent let's see what happens when we expose aerogel directly to Daylight it's yellow when I hold it up to the sky it looks yellow because it allows longer wavelengths of sunlight such as yellow and red to pass through more easily especially in bright sunlight this phenomenon is similar to the way the sky appears blue during the day and changes color at sunrise and sunset I would like to thank the solar core team for allowing us to to film this documentary subscribe to my YouTube channel for more documentaries like this RI chanet was here