Image of the the darkest colour on Earth, 'Vantablack,' has people convinced it's edited

Social media users have been left stunned after a picture of the darkest man-made substance on Planet Earth went viral.

X / Twitter account @creepydotorg, which posts content showing "the creepy side of the world" according to its bio, shared a photo of a scientist holding a basketball that was covered with Vantablack which holds the official world record.

It appears as if the image has been altered and social media users have said the same thing.

But the company behind it has reassured it is not.

Vantablack was developed by a British company called Surrey NanoSystems and is known to absorb up to 99.965 per cent of visible light.

Its website said: "Vantablack is the brand name for a new class of super-black coatings. The coatings are unique in that they all have hemispherical reflectances below one per cent and also retain that level of performance from all viewing angles.

"The original coating known just as Vantablack was a super-black coating that holds the independently verified world record as the darkest man-made substance.

"It was originally developed for satellite-borne blackbody calibration systems but due to limitations in how it was manufactured it's been surpassed by our spray applied Vantablack coatings."

Social media reaction

Social media users couldn't believe what they were seeing and some couldn't quite get their heads around it all - there have been some brilliant reactions and memes too.

In 2022, Grimes revealed she was wearing an exclusive Vantablack crown at the 2018 Met Gala having got hold of a sample of Vantablack and melted it down.

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