The first headlines came way back in 2014. British Indian artist Anish Kapoor was experimenting with Vantablack, a newly invented material said to be the blackest black ever made.

“This material is the blackest material in the universe. Blacker than a black hole. It absorbs 99.8 percent of all light,” Kapoor wrote in an email. (Artist Diemut Strebe actually created a blacker, 99.995 percent absorbent black with MIT scientists in 2019.)