We think it’s safe to say NASA has created some incredible things over the years, the most impressive being large rockets that can take things outside of the planet and onto other masses within space. But NASA’s thermal tiles technology comes in a close second as it allows a person to hold an insane amount of heat in their hands.
The material these thermal tiles are created out of is called LI-900, which is basically highly-refined quartz sand that can be used to suck up extreme temperatures. In the video showing off their thermal tiles, we can see a person explaining how the cubes work, which have been sitting in a 2,200-degree oven, while he picks them up without screaming in agonizing pain from his hand being melted.
The way the thermal tiles work is each tile is made of 94 percent air by volume and 99.9 percent silica glass, which when combined, results in the tile being a bad conducent. This means you can effectively carry around pure fire without having to worry about a silly thing like bursting into flames as a result.