Aircraft company Boeing has developed "the world's lightest material," whict it calls Microlattice.
The material is said to be 99.99 percent air. It can be compressed to high levels without breaking and can absorb high amounts of energy, making it flexible, the New York Daily News reports.
The material is so light that it can sit atop a dandelion without crushing it. It is a 3-D open-cellular polymer structure made up of interconnected hollow tubes that are 1,000 times thinner than human hair, the Daily Mail reports.
Sophia Yang, the researcher at HRL laboratories that worked with Boeing on the material, compares the product to a bone - hard on the outside but mostly hollow inside, making the material both strong and light.
The material is intended to be useful in the field of aerospace engineering. When used for plane interiors, aircrafts' weight can be greatly reduced, making flights cheaper and much more fuel-efficient.
Using the "egg challenge," Yang also demonstrates how the design of the microlattice could easily absorb a high level of impact, even when dropped from great heights.
"You need to drop an egg from 25 stories and protect that egg ... What we can do is design the microlattice to absorb the force that the egg feels. So instead of having an egg that's wrapped in three feet of bubble wrap, now you have a much smaller package that your egg can sit in," Yang said, according to Business Insider.
