Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon
technologyreview.com
Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon
1–10 of 84 posts
Re: Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon
#2I don't know if it's a function of thickness, or if they've beaten these researchers to the punch, but black widow spiders spin by far the strongest thread I have ever encountered. There's never any doubt when I encounter a black widow web, and that's how I know to proceed with caution, when I'm working in my garage on the next Google haha.
Re: Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon
#3I just wrote this up myself. The results are remarkable, but the credit seems entirely due to the spiders. Well, not entirely, but the data is so limited! They only got a handful of spiders, from the lab's back yard essentially, and a bunch of them died from nanomaterial exposure, malnutrition, or both after 1 trial!
Yet despite the bargain bin trappings, the results are so incredibly cool! The spiders just... incorporated carbon nanotubes and graphene into their silk-spinning process? What?! What's the mechanism?! No one knows! Who would have guessed this would work? It sounds like a joke experiment they cooked up while waiting for the glassware to bake!
Hopefully a more rigorous study replicating and expanding on these results will appear. But it just blew my mind the way this particular science appeared.
Re: Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon
#4I don't know if it's a function of thickness, or if they've beaten these researchers to the punch, but black widow spiders spin by far the strongest thread I have ever encountered. There's never any doubt when I encounter a black widow web, and that's how I know to proceed with caution, when I'm working in my garage on the next Google haha.
They might be twining multiple threads (each themselves consisting of multiple strands) together to make an especially strong dragline or something. The giant riverine orb spider is on record as making the strongest thread, but that might be under certain conditions (like what comes out of the spinnerette (sp?), no weaving allowed) or the like.
Re: Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon
#5Just when I'm full up on superhero themes it gets all interesting again.
Re: Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon
#6> “This new reinforcing procedure could also be applied to other animals and plants, leading to a new class of bionic materials,”
how about silk worms? at least we know how to handle those in bulk.
Re: Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon
#7Just when I'm full up on superhero themes it gets all interesting again.
Peter parker was just your average day Pholcidae spider, until one fateful day when he was exposed to experimental carbon nano-tubes. Now he must decide, will he use his new found super web powers for good, or for personal gain?
Re: Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon
#8Just when I'm full up on superhero themes it gets all interesting again.
Peter parker was just your average day Pholcidae spider, until one fateful day when he was exposed to experimental carbon nano-tubes. Now he must decide, will he use his new found super web powers for good, or for personal gain?
Time to make another movie reboot.
Re: Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon
#9This is sad, in a way; once I achieve my dream of exterminating all the spiders there won't be any left to spin this nanotube-reinforced fiber.
Re: Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon
#10Tldr its stronger than kevlar they say
Cool!