A Solid That’s Light As Air

If you wanted to catch a few particles of comet dust speeding through the vacuum of space at 6 kilometers per second — without damaging or destroying those particles — how would you do it?

Faced with exactly this problem, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory focused on aerogel — an extremely lightweight, porous material that is chemically identical to glass, but weighs only a little more than air.

By Dylan Tweney

Full Story: http://wired.com/news/technology/0,70268-0.html?tw=wn_index_1