A team of researchers at King Abdulla University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia has made the blackest material ever created by human beings.

The result of their work was an extremely tiny nanoparticle rod which was able to absorb approximately 98 to 99 percent of the light, reported the Nature Nanotechnology magazine.

The researchers noted that the scales on the cyphochilus beetle—a photonic crystal structure—caused the beetle’s shell to reflect light very efficiently. They took that idea and turned it on its head by inverting the structure and used the idea of chaotic energy harvesting to create this extremely black material.