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Researchers Make Spiders Produce Silk Strengthened With Graphene
An anonymous reader writes: Italian researchers in Trent have enabled 15 Pholcidae spiders to spin graphene-strengthened dragline silk just by spraying them with a solution containing carbon nanotubes and graphene flakes. The resulting fiber is as strong as Kevlar 49, and ranks among the most resilient and ductile in the world of manufacturing. But Emiliano Lepore's research has not succeeded in understanding by what process the spiders are able to incorporate the ambient materials into their webs. Since spider-farming is historically unproductive, the possibility of continuing the research on silk-worms has been presented.
Aside from the overtly disconcerting possibilities of nanotechnology-augmented spiders; does it strike anyone else as a matter for some potential concern that at least some organisms are quite permeable indeed to novel carbon structures?
Since spider-farming is historically unproductive
That's a really odd way to spell "nightmare fuel".
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I,for one, welcome our new spider overlords.
Italian researchers have renamed Trent.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Theres a B horror movie in here somewhere.
Similarly if you laid in a bath of alcohol for long enough, you could get drunk by the body absorbing alcohol through your skin.
Come on. Stop giving the college kids fresh ideas on how to get drunk. Enough already.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Hmm, that would explain that message from the future I received the other day that simply read "OMG SPIDERS"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
And none too soon. We won't be able to get off the planet fast enough once it's overrun with genetically engineered super spiders.
Since spider-farming is historically unproductive,
Not if you're a dwarf living in a fortress that somehow managed to capture a giant cave spider.