On 18 March an announcement was made that shook the world of manufacturing. For centuries man has had to endure white paper for writing down notes, works of art, or fake telephone numbers from girls met in the bar.
Sure, there was the development of colored paper, but that’s just putting lipstick on a pig. The real innovation will come in the not too distant future when we will be able to enjoy paper the way it was truly meant to be – nearly invisible!
Think of the applications! Seriously, think about it, because we had to for a really long time.
This revolutionary paper is being developed as a joint venture by Oji Holdings and Mitsubishi Chemical and they expect it to be fully ready for mass production in 2016-17ish.
This paper is made of a similar pulp as regular paper. However, the cellulose nanofibers of this pulp are about 1/20,000 the size of a single hair.
Together they would create a sheet of paper thousands of times more likely to be misplaced than regular sheets, thus improving the plausibility of our excuses for forgetting stuff at least 500 times.
The nanofibers themselves are nothing new but this would be the first time they could be processed into a sheet or paper.
The texture of this paper is reportedly similar to regular paper and can be folded like origami. So you can make all the invisible cranes you want. In fact, here’s one we made earlier.
The companies announced that the nanofiber made paper may also have the ability to change its optical properties. This would make it useful for things like electronically updateable newspapers that you could fold up into your pocket.
That’s great but secondary to the ability to make invisible spit-balls.
Source: 47 News (Japanese)
Image: RocketNews24