A new carbon nanotube coating developed at the University of Michigan acts as a "magic black cloth" that conceals an object's three-dimensional geometry and makes it look like a flat black sheet, and could inspire a new type of camouflaging paint for stealth aircraft. Today's stealth planes use shape to scatter electromagnetic waves and avoid detection, and this scheme could actually absorb the waves. The 70-micron coating, or carbon nanotube carpet, is about half the thickness of a sheet of paper. It absorbs 99.9 percent of the light that hits it, researchers say. The paper was published in November in Applied Physics Letters.

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