This aerogel stuff that they

This aerogel stuff that they used on Stardust continues to amaze me. It looks like frozen smoke. It’s a great insulator for convective heat, and you can even lace it with other materials to make it insulate against radiative heat as well (they used it to insulate the batteries on the Mars Exploration Rovers). I wondered what it felt like, so Gavin looked it up. It looks like it should feel like Jello and should be all wobbly, but apparently it feels like rough, scratchy volcanic pumice. Only much lighter because it’s 99.8% air. If you touch it softly, it will bounce back. If you touch it harder, it dimples. And if you press hard enough to exceed the elastic limit, it shatters like glass. It’s completely bizarre.
I totally want to buy some and just have a block of aerogel sitting on my desk to poke and think “this is so cool,” and it’s only $1 per cubic centimeter. But the smallest quantity you can get is a liter, which would be $1000. (Yes, I had to look up that conversion.)
Aerogel. Who comes up with this crazy stuff?
Becca, Jen and I went swimming last night. It was my first time in the pool since last May or something, and I could feel my out-of-shapeness. I did 27 laps in just under 35:00. Two sets of 10 laps with a couple minutes break in between, followed by a final set of 7 that I ended because Becca and Jen had stopped, and I was tired anyway. I hope to start swimming again at least once per week to get back in reasonable shape for a triathlon. The apartment complex pool was successfully heated, though still overchlorinated…