"Super Silk": Silk That's Strong Enough to Catch a Falling Plane

Spider-Man is famous for saving damsels in distress and flying from building to building using the super-strong webs he shoots from his wrists. This superpower is no longer fictitious, thanks to Italian researchers who have worked to create spider silk that's reportedly strong enough to catch a falling plane.

While they haven't yet figured out how to create a real-life Spider-Man, scientists at the University of Trento in Italy have discovered that spraying water combined with graphene or carbon nanotubes on spiders causes the arachnids to spin "super silk"--silk that's stronger than any known fiber. Discovered in 2004, graphene is a relatively new material. It's only as thick as an atom but extremely strong and very light, making it ideal for a number of industrial purposes.

Spider silk in itself is quite tough and ductile--in fact, it's as strong as high-grade alloy steel.Today's spider silk is the result of 400 million years of evolution at work, so an improvement on such a longstanding piece of nature is interesting to say the least.

Scientists still have a number of challenges to overcome before we can start catching falling airplanes--for example, there still isn't an efficient way to harvest spider silk. However, the possibilities of the application of "super-silk" are abundant, ranging from fabric design to tissue repair.