Diemut Strebe How to Make a Diamond Disappear

The New Yorker Oct 27, 2019

Toward the back of the sixth-floor boardroom of the New York Stock Exchange—past the fake skylight and the real Fabergé urn—there’s a black, walnut-size blob on display. One might miss it, were it not covered by a glass dome and protected by a red velvet rope. The blob is actually a seventeen-carat yellow diamond, which scientists at M.I.T. coated with carbon nanotubes that absorb 99.995 per cent of light, creating the blackest black on earth—darker, even, than Vantablack, which, in 2016, the sculptor Anish Kapoor laid claim to. This new blackest black is ten times—

Wait. There’s someone who would be unhappy with the way this story is unspooling. (Someone besides Anish Kapoor, that is.) Let’s start over.

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