Riding on yucky Soot...

Yes! Black, sticky soot is manufactured on a large scale. It is the primary filler in tires and the main reason why tires are black. Manufactured soot is called carbon black....a rose by any other name...

Believe it or not, there is a science to making soot. Oil or gas must be burned at exactly the right temperature and with just the right amount of oxygen to starve the flame so that soot is produced instead of burning cleanly.

And, this soot can actually be made with different physical properities. Those properties are tested with a bunch of highly sophisticated instruments (tongue in cheek) that measure how much the rubber will stretch before it breaks, how much the rubber will squish under pressure, and my favorite, how high a ball of the rubber will bounce.

Some of these instruments look like they are right out of a toy store but, they do provide measurable results and those measurements form the basis for some of the specifications for the soot (carbon black). Some soot is manufactured specifically to be compounded into rubber for tires to make them grab the road, wear evenly, and last for 40,000 miles or more.

So, in a sense, you are riding of a cushion of specialized soot every time you drive your car.