Gerhow to sew art3/24/2024 NASA uses it to collect particles from comet tails and as an insulator for the sensitive electronics of the Mars Rover. It is also incredibly strong, despite being quite brittle at the same time. The lightest solid known to man, it is an excellent insulator. In spite of its name, silica aerogel is actually a solid synthetic material that is 99.98% air and sand. Needless to say, it has wonderful artistic potential. There is something strangely sensual about its appearance. It scatters light in such a way that it looks bluish against a black background, yet yellowish against a white background. Known as “frozen smoke” because of its cloudy appearance, it is nevertheless almost as transparent as clean air. This is what I see when I look at silica aerogel, the main substance in my first project as artist in residence at the department of physics and astronomy at the University of St Andrews. It is a place where it is hard to pin anything down, where you can no longer describe physical form with adjectives such as hard, soft, wet, dry, cold or hot. Imagine a ghostly replica of our world: a planet made only of sand, illuminated by a different star, surrounded by an unknown dreamy atmosphere that is different to anything you have seen before.
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