71
Gene-edited spider silk 6x stronger than bulletproof Kevlar
(interestingengineering.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
71 points (100.0% liked)
Science
13051 readers
3 users here now
Studies, research findings, and interesting tidbits from the ever-expanding scientific world.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Spider silk breakthroughs have been a tech news staple since the nineties, as far as I can remember.
Never have seen a product that makes use of the special properties.
Production has been a real bottleneck. Also, I'm skeptical they got the actual strength right in this headline. It's strong, but it's still a biological material.
Edit: Yeah, it's half as strong per weight as a high-strength synthetic polymer, and weaker than normal steel on a volumetric basis. It stretches really far before it snaps though, which has implications for things like energy absorption.