Invisible super-fibers in web of the southern house spider discovered, thinner and stretchier than any other
| October 21, 2024 — By Jake Silliman |
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Walking into a spider web is usually not a pleasant experience. Little do people realize spider silk is made from a material five times stronger than steel by weight, and because it’s entirely protein, it is even edible! Trying to turn this wonder material into practical applications, scientists have studied it for years.
Researchers at William & Mary have now discovered another record-breaking trait: in the webs of the southern house spider, a common spider in the U.S., they found fibrils that are 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. Graduate student Jacob Silliman did a remarkable experiment with these fibers: although the fibrils are too thin to see and are merely a few molecular layers thick, he pulled on individual fibrils to measure their strength. He found that they can stretch up to 11 times their normal length, which is twice that of any other spider silk tested before, even outdoing the stuff that Spider Man has in the movies. This material appears to have even more potential and secrets than previously thought, and the team around Professor Hannes Schniepp is now using even more powerful microscopes to reveal them. One day, they hope, enough of it can be made so that all of us get to use it — for lighter bicycles and more energy efficient cars. The study will be published in Advanced Functional Materials, one of the top materials science journals globally.
