Let's admit it: As cool as it would be to fly around like Superman, we've all had dreams of being able to sling web and swing from buildings like Spider-Man himself:
And now it looks like we might be able to do that in the very near future!
Tufts University biotech researcher Marco Lo Presti made an astonishing discovery while investigating how silk and dopamine allow mussels to stick to rocky surfaces.
'While using acetone to clean the glassware of this silk and dopamine substance,' he told Wired, 'I noticed it was undergoing a transition into a solid format, into a web-looking material, into something that looked like a fiber.'
...
The result is an astonishingly 'Spider Man'-like silk that can be shot not unlike the superhero's wrist-mounted web shooters, as detailed in a paper published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials last year.
Okay, admittedly, when we read this, we might think the result looks something like this:
But I'm afraid the technology is still, um, very much in its infancy:
Not sure we'll be swinging through the New York skyline on this stuff anytime soon!
Still, the researchers are excited about the possibilities for their new discovery:
'You explore and you play and you sort of connect the dots,' he told Wired. 'Part of the play that is very underestimated is where you say "Hey, wait a second, is this like a Spider-Man thing?" And you brush it off at first, but a material that mimics superpowers is always a very, very good thing.'
Translation:
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