MIT Labs Moves Ahead In Synthesizing Spider Silk

icepick72 writes in with a link to an ExtremeTech article on new methods for creating synthetic spider silk. This material, like lycra in many ways, has a number of unique properties. The MIT lab that created it is being monitored by military elements, keenly interested in applications of this material to front-line technologies. From the article: "The secret of spider silk's combined strength and flexibility, according to scientists, has to do with the arrangement of the nano-crystalline reinforcement of the silk as it is being produced--in other words, the way these tiny crystals are oriented towards (and adhere to) the stretchy protein. Emulating this process in a synthetic polymer, the MIT team focused on reinforcing solutions of commercial rubbery substance known as polyurethane elastomer with nano-sized clay platelets instead of simply heating and mixing the molten plastics with reinforcing agents."

Re:Back to spiders...

[TapeCutter]

"large metal spider butts"

I hear one group tried this, but a soon as one of them mentioned the word "large", the female spider attached to the butt ate the whole group.

Seriously, I worked in a nylon spinning plant a long time ago and a large knitting machine looks a bit like a spiders butt Howvever, it takes a five story tall "machine" engineered with incredible presicion to make the fine threads that go into a stocking, the static on some parts of the machine can throw a spark over a foot long.

I don't know exactly how a spider's butt works (or for that matter a nylon plant), but I assume the spiders superiour abilities are related to the intricate and amazingly complex nano machinery [youtube.com] inside every cell of the spider.

Re:I love these kinds of statements

[DJCacophony]

1. When you're trying to visualize something, it's easier to relate it to something you see often. Which do you see more often, 30 rulers lined end to end, or a garbage truck?

2. Its easier to visualize less of something than more of something. Which is easier to visualize, a TV that is the height of 100,000 grains of sand, or a TV that is the width of a two-person sofa?

Re:GW Bush is not that dumb.

[MadUndergrad]

That's a rather unfair generalization. I'd say we average about .6wit. There are maybe 10% with their wits about them, 10% totally witless, about 55% are half-wits, and 25% are .8wits. Unfortunately the witless and the halfwits come out in droves, and most vote strait-ticket for whomever opposes gay people and reason.

Re:Spiderman!

[Instine]

With this :

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/1 1/0430240 [slashdot.org]

We may have sussed it.

So what?

[mangu]

The big advantage is that it uses harmless ingredients and low temperatures. Compare for example Kevlar, the manufacture of which needs concentrated sulfuric acid.

I'm not sure that's such an advantage. There's concentrated sulfuric acid in car batteries, people have been driving cars for a hundred years, how many people have suffered accidents from battery acid in that time? I mean, compared to overall accidents involving cars?

Industrial processes often involve nasty chemicals, at dangerous temperatures and pressures. That's no big deal, one can easily take all the necessary precautions. The problem is when the industrial process consumes a large amount of a limited resource, or when it generates a large amount of waste.

Re:I love these kinds of statements

[MindStalker]

Something like "a 1/4 mile" is much better in my opinion.

Re:That be one of those 'scii-eence' thingamabobs

[scatter_gather]

The alternative is to tag it as magic.

Re:A third useful property of spider silk

[paeanblack]

Except if it were, it would seriously impact the longevity of the product, rendering it useless for things like construction. Who wants a building that's going to fall apart in ten or twenty years because of bacteria eating it?

Developers, Architects, Engineers, Contractors, Laborers, Brokers, Agents, Lawyers, and everyone else who makes money replacing it.

The world learned a long time ago that there is no money to be made in selling products that last.

Re:GW Bush is not that dumb.

[loki_tiwaz]

There was this thing some chap invented quite some time ago, I think his name must have been Bell, called the 'Bell Curve', representing the statistical patterns that appear in nearly any collection of data one cares to poke a stick at.

Being that 98% of the majority (51% as it is considered in politics generally) are halfwits, it is no wonder we are in the mess we are in. This segment of the population is the most pliable to political trickery and least likely to notice they are being lied to.

The Republic is a tyranny of the majority of idiots who have no business determining the process of social change, and the God-King Emperor/President is just the face selected from the two options which is the least ugly. Democracy is a way to make everyone think that they are participating when in actual fact the outcomes are determined by those with the most money to brainwash the most people, and up the chain to the ones lending out imaginary money who decide who gets to play with the next wave of funny money and thereby giving them control over politics by selecting which groups they are the most generous with.

I don't know if there is anything that can be done to change the shape of it. For example, if we selectively culled those below 100 IQ (assuming one can settle on a test which gives a useful answer) then the whole curve just shifts into the right hand side from before and assumes the same structure. Is intelligence at issue, or is it emotional lability? I have met plenty of clever people who are brainwashed or believe the most inordinate nonsense. Lao Tzu would say that increasing the cleverness of the people would just lead to more sophisticated forms of trickery and crime. Making people dumber will not help either.

I gave up some years ago when I realised that the only thing one can do is find a way to advance towards one's goals, and use other people to define the faults we wish to eradicate in ourselves.

Anyway, back to the topic - synthetic spider silk sure would improve safety for mountain climbers, especially if combined with that gecko sticky stuff one of the first comments referenced, and probably would be very useful for special ops sneaking into enemy installations and planting charges. The idea of a device one can fire a very long and thin but extremely strong rope that ends in a sticky surface that will literally stick to anything strongly enough to hold the weight of a fully laden soldier is a very interesting piece of technology.

Imagine the wonderful pranks such technology would enable. Now that is what I am most interested in.