Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Silk is a fabulous fabric, but it’s also a material that can do so ...

Silk is smooth, strong, and biocompatible, making it a prized material for many applications. Scientists have tried all kinds of tricks to improve silk or imbue it with new properties: They have fed ...

Spiders hold the market for the strongest silks but are too aggressive and territorial to be farmed. The next best alternative involves incorporating spider DNA into silkworms, an expensive and ...

Silkworm thread has been turned into superstrong material that surpasses the strength of natural spider silks, according to research. Scientists have made it 70 percent stronger than a spider's silk ...

Hannes Schniepp and Sean Koebley talk about silk as being either alive or dead. They aren’t talking about the silk of scarves and dresses. The finest garment-quality silks are made gently, by boiling ...

Spiders and silkworms make silk by the yard. Why can’t we copy them? Silk is strong, light and flexible and is being examined for use in everything from medical sutures to advanced electronics. Silk ...

There are few things as haunting as walking into a spider web. But the special silk behind these universally reviled arachnid nets shows huge promise for saving human lives, from battling cancer to ...

Engineers can make a material that is stiffer than the real thing. Starting with silk produced by silkworms, breaking it down chemically, and then reassembling it, the new material can be shaped into ...

The lowly silkworm has spurred exploration here on Earth for centuries. First in the development of the silk roads between China and Europe and then closer to home in colonial Georgia where English ...

Super strong artificial silk? That’s so metal. Giving revamped silkworm silk a metallic bath may make the strands both strong and stiff, scientists report October 6 in Matter. Some strands were up to ...

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