The world's blackest material makes NASA's ultra-black paint look like it's not even black

The paint used on the Hubble telescope is one of the blackest materials in space. It's there to reduce stray light so the instrument can photograph the best possible images of our solar system and beyond.

But researchers from British company Surrey NanoSystems have made something much, much blacker.

Their material, awesomely called Vantablack, is so black that they can't even measure how dark it is.

They've posted a YouTube video comparing their creation to the Hubble paint, called Aeroglaze Z306.

Vantablack makes Aeroglaze look like it's not even black. When the researchers shine a light on the two, you can see the Hubble paint reflecting light back, but not Vantablack:

The same thing happens when they shine a red laser on the two materials:

Vantablack absorbs almost all of the light, reflecting nothing detectable back to our eyes. It's made by tightly packing carbon nanotubes - rods of carbon that are much, much thinner than any human hair - so close together that light goes in, but can't escape.

Surrey NanoSystems has tested Vantablack to see if it could withstand going into space, so maybe the material could replace Aeroglaze on the next space telescope.

They've also turned Vantablack into a spray paint that captures 99.8% of light (slightly lower than Vantablack's 99.965%). You can't find it on store shelves, though: The spray paint is currently only available through the company's processing center in the UK.

Watch the full video of the Aeroglaze vs. Vantablack comparison: