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from the side-of-nightmare-with-your-space-elevator dept.
Spider silk is one of the more extraordinary materials known to science. The protein fiber, spun by spiders to make webs, is stronger than almost anything that humans can make.
The dragline silk spiders use to make a web's outer rim and spokes is amazing stuff. It matches high-grade alloy steel for tensile strength but is about a sixth as dense. It is also highly ductile, sometimes capable of stretching to five times its length.
This combination of strength and ductility makes spider silk extremely tough, matching the toughness of state-of-the-art carbon fibers such as Kevlar.
No word in the article on how close to the necessary tensile strength for a space elevator they come. Or how quickly the spiders got cancer. But at least it's a simple process. I wonder if the same technique will work with silkworms, which are commercially viable (something that spiders aren't).
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Funny) by penguinoid on Wednesday July 01 2015, @05:32AM
If spider silk is so god damn strong why can I tear it to shreds with my bare hands?
Odds are you're superhumanly strong. Better do another test to be certain: ants are considered to be incredibly strong and capable of lifting great weights. Can you lift more than an ant?
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.