SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
A research team from Tsinghua University in Beijing has developed a fibre they say is so strong it could even be used to build an elevator to space.
They say just 1 cubic centimetre of the fibre – made from carbon nanotube – would not break under the weight of 160 elephants, or more than 800 tonnes. And that tiny piece of cable would weigh just 1.6 grams.
"This is a breakthrough," said Wang Changqing, a scientist at a key space elevator research centre at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian who was not involved in the Tsinghua study.
The Chinese team has developed a new "ultralong" fibre from carbon nanotube that they say is stronger than anything seen before, patenting the technology and publishing part of their research in the journal Nature Nanotechnology earlier this year.
"It is evident that the tensile strength of carbon nanotube bundles is at least 9 to 45 times that of other materials," the team said in the paper.
But hey, it's China, please consume with a medium-sized boulder of salt.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday October 26 2018, @06:12PM
You know they published their materials and methods and if you had the ability to synthesize the individual nanotubes they as inputs use you could make this kind of bundle yourself, right?
Unless I'm misunderstanding the jargon, when you look at what the researchers are doing here it's:
1. tying a bundle by "traditional" means
2. pulling it taut
3. cutting it with fucking scissors, which somehow releases the weaker connections inside
4. Stretching and slacking the strand repeatedly
Again, I could easily have misunderstood, I'm no nanotechnologist, but if you really wanted to steal this you could right fucking now