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Super-Strong Synthetic Muscles Developed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the we-have-the-technology-we-can-rebuild-him dept.

Too Hot! wrote to mention a BBC article about extremely powerful synthetic muscles. From the article: "The most powerful type, 'shorted fuel cell muscles' convert chemical energy into heat, causing a special shape-memory metal alloy to contract. Turning down the heat allows the muscle to relax. Lab tests showed that these devices had a lifting strength more than 100 times that of normal skeletal muscle. Another kind of muscle being developed by the team converted chemical energy into electrical energy which caused a material made from carbon nanotube electrodes to bend."

7 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Yes, but... by coffeechica · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm still trying to make up my mind to decide whether this is awesome or frightening. Both, I guess. Because there are so obviously enormous benefits. But on the other hand, when you've grown up on Marvel comics, then any mention of superhuman strength makes me wonder about the potential problems.

    Fancy imagining that kind of technology in the hands of some warlord in a third world country somewhere? Or even in a normal army? I'm not sure it's something I really want to envision.

  2. Should help the disabled by Cybert14 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Meaning all of us. I hope we start abandoning our evolved bodies soon. What we'll become will make what we are now seem quite disabled.

    1. Re:Should help the disabled by lurch_mojoff · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Well, it's an argument in that there are some people who, due to a lack of understanding or a passionate need to believe their religious texts are literal truth (or both), are vehemently clinging to the idea that life didn't evolve. From a scientific perspective, there is no real argument... the evidence is inescapable.
      Yes, of course there is no real argument. Mine was an, obviously bad, attempt for a joke. (oops)

      If you look at it, man is able to create artificial muscles that are a hundred times stronger than his own. This alone is pretty strong evidence that there was not much intelligent engineering in the "creation" of the human body. Otherwise we would have been much less vulnerable to, well, practically everything.
  3. wtf by 3-State+Bit · · Score: 2, Interesting
    a lifting strength more than 100 times that of normal
    skeletal muscle

    Whoa. okay.

    Fact 1. You know, the human body is so efficient at converting Calorie input into work output that in the world of fitness and nutrition, we practically don't even need to differentiate between Calorie intake and Calorie output! Eating exactly 500 Calories less is almost the same as performing exactly 500 Calories of work! (I think that fairly exact Calorie output testing can be performed in the laboratory, although I don't know the technique.)

    Fact 2. Now let's all take a moment to read the Wipedia article on the human muscle, which includes:
    Muscle can produce 3.35 kW (4 1/2 horsepower) at full rate.
    Okay, so combined with 100 times that of normal skeletal muscle, these lab muscles can perform work at a rate of 335 kW or 450 horsepower per second at pretty much perfect efficiency! Holy shit.

    So how far away are we from organic power plants?
    Wait a minute, 459 horsepower? How far are we from starting the morning with a couple of gallons of nutritional shake for our organic car?
    1. Re:wtf by Elemenope · · Score: 2, Interesting

      And it is articles like this, all of them, that assure us of the perpetuity of Joe being dumb. If there was perhaps an incentive for Joe being smarter...but, no, instant gratification is so much more marketable.

      --
      All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
  4. BioEngineering by haakondahl · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have for some time wanted to write a story including a "car" powered by a V-8 engine which is organic above the crankshaft. I have done my little engineering studies of nutrient bath and circulatory systems, exhaust issues (I mean this thing shits all over the road) and such... I have so far envisioned genetically tuned muscles, grown in a vat (or what-have-you), but the synthetic muscles are interesting.
    The problem is that I don't have a story there, just a neato idea. Not even characters. That doesn't stop many SF writers, unfortunately.

    --
    Don't trust anyone under thirty.
  5. Other uses by Ztream · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why is everyone here thinking "body augmentation"? I think this has very interesting implications for robotics and other forms of mechanical engineering; methinks the muscle is a pretty smart invention for certain types of movement and force application.