Busy today, but you may want to play with this. 

U.S. researchers said on Tuesday they have made the darkest material on Earth, a substance so black it absorbs more than 99.9 percent of light. Made from tiny tubes of carbon standing on end, this material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness. And the material is close to the long-sought ideal black, which could absorb all colours of light and reflect none…

The substance has a total reflective index of 0.045 percent – which is more than three times darker than the nickel-phosphorous alloy that now holds the record as the world’s darkest material. Basic black paint, by comparison, has a reflective index of 5 percent to 10 percent. The researchers are seeking a world’s darkest material designation by Guinness World Records. But their work will likely yield more than just bragging rights. [Dr Pulickel] Ajayan said the material could be used in solar energy conversion. “You could think of a material that basically collects all the light that falls into it,” he said…

The researchers have tested the material on visible light only. Now they want to see how it fares against infrared and ultraviolet light, and other wavelengths such as radiation used in communications systems. “If you could make materials that would block these radiations, it could have serious applications for stealth and defence,” Ajayan said.

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In this five-minute TED lecture, oceanographer David Gallo reveals shape-shifting cuttlefish, octopus camouflage and bioluminescent oddities. The flirting squid are particularly funny.

More. Related: Tentacle Pornfest.

Here’s a little something for fans of the outlandish and uncanny. BBC4’s documentary series on British science fiction, The Martians and Us, can now be viewed online. Part one, Apes to Aliens, takes evolution as its theme and traces a brief and entertaining history, from H.G. Wells’ anonymous time traveller to John Wyndham’s unearthly schoolchildren. The three-part series covers the obvious and the obscure, the inspired and the unhinged, and teases out what has often made British science fiction different from, and darker than, its American cousin.

Here’s a taste.

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Part 2, Trouble in Paradise, and part 3, The End of the World as We Know It, are also online. Well worth watching. (h/t, The Thin Man.) Related: The original 1960 trailer for Village of the Damned. And here’s George Sanders having trouble keeping secrets.   

The HTV-3X hypersonic Scramjet could travel from New York to Tokyo in two hours. “If it works.”

The world’s fastest jet, the Air Force’s SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, set a speed record of Mach 3.3 in 1990 when it flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in just over an hour. That’s about the limit for jet engines; the fastest fighter planes barely crack Mach 1.6. Scramjets, on the other hand, can theoretically fly as fast as Mach 15 — nearly 10,000 mph.

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