If you want to stand out at your next metal gig, don't settle for a spot of color in a sea of black – go ultrablack instead.

Engineers at Cornell University have created the blackest fabric on record, finding it absorbs 99.87 percent of all light that dares to illuminate its surface.

To make something ultrablack, you can't just dip it in a dye and call it a day. It requires manipulating the structure of a material on the nanoscopic scale so that it captures as much light as possible.

In this case, the Cornell researchers dyed a white merino wool knit fabric with a synthetic melanin polymer called polydopamine . Then, they placed the material in a plasma chamber, and etched structures called nanofibrils – essentially, tiny fibers that trap light.

"The light basically bounces back

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