Spider Silk Cape Goes On Display 96
fangmcgee writes "Before anyone asks, no, it's not bulletproof. But that doesn't mean that the glistening yellow cape—the world's largest garment made entirely from spider silk—isn't a massive feat of engineering to be marveled. Now on public display for the first time at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the textile gets its unearthly gleam from the undyed filaments of the golden orb spider, a species of arachnid commonly found in Madagascar."
Obligatory Futurama... (Score:5, Funny)
http://theinfosphere.org/Spiderians
Re:Obligatory Futurama... (Score:5, Funny)
One art please! /zoidberg
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But unlike mulberry silk from silkworms, in which the hapless pupa is boiled alive in its cocoon, the spiders were released into the wild at the end of each day.
I... don't think it's doing as much crawling as you think.
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But if the silk is made by a caterpillar, you're OK with it? Not creepy? (Try to imagine the crawling caterpillar producing the thread)
Well, yes, spiders are vile, creepy monstrosities self-evidently transported here from an alternative universe of horror by a malevolent race of fiends.
Whereas caterpillars are cute and turn into butterflies.
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You'd be surprised, but there are some dwarves out there who have entire outfits made of spider silk.
Bulletproof? (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, bulletproof would be nice, but what I really want to know is whether it'll let me block creatures with flying.
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I'd be happy if it just let me traverse the web the wizard just dropped on the entire party.
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Enchant Creature
Sacrifice Spidersilk Cape: Enchanted creature can block flying until end of turn. You may sacrifice a spider you control to return Spidersilk Cape to your hand instead of moving it to the graveyard.
It seemed a shame that an object of such beauty was ultimately betrayed by its utility.
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The V&A site is here: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/g/golden-spider-silk/ not much information but a nice picture.
That's remarkable, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Godley spent five years collecting and harnessing over 1 million spiders in special “silking” contraptions to extract their threads, 24 critters at a time.
On average, 23,000 spiders yield roughly 1 ounce of silk, making the process intensely laborious and time-consuming.
I am amazed and impressed, but a part of me goes "wtf was the point?"
Ah, well. That's one heck of an art project.
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Yeah, why is an british art historian wasting his time on an art project?
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I was honestly hoping to read that they used some new method of silk production to make this, but no, just a lot of WASTED labor.
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Chemistry was Alchemy, and Alchemy was a sink to put your useless monarch money extorted from the peasants. Alchemy was considered as "might be amusing once per year, and may produce gold, but the record tells us its unlikely".
Chemistry was useless before it became Chemistry.
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alchemists of the time were always saying transmutation was "about 10 years away".
btw, it gave us the alembic, which gave us whisky. so it's not a waste in my book.
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alchemists of the time were always saying transmutation was "about 10 years away".
So they were the AI/singularity fanboys of their time?
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An 11-foot-long prototype of the spider-silk textile debuted at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 2009, where it broke all records for most number of visitors to a single exhibit.
Presumably, if that many people want to see it, some people might want to buy it, too. They might end up making a profit on it.
Re:Hey... (Score:4, Interesting)
TFA does describe some of the processing of the garment, so I'd assume that it would be wearable like normal silk.
It's apparently also supposed to be very light. Is it strong too? Or is the point just to have done it because it was there? If its properties end up being worse than silk-worm silk then there isn't really much point.
it is strong (Score:2)
jump to 1:20 ish.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june11/nova_01-19.html [pbs.org]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z07dB3sKTs [youtube.com]
Spider silk isn't sticky (Score:5, Informative)
Spider silk isn't sticky by itself. It's essentially some very long protein filaments, same as worm-butt silk.
What makes spider orbs sticky is that the spider then deposits small droplets of glue along the threads.
But even spiders produce non-glued silk all the time. E.g., when a spider lowers itself by dangling on a silk filament, it doesn't bother putting glue on it.
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Actually most spiders produce something like 5-7 different kinds of silk protein, with a separate organ for producing each. The strongest being dragline silk, which makes the structural part of the traditional bug-catching web and earns the "stronger than steel" reputation. The "glue" is actually another type of silk, which I believe is typically combined with *yet another* kind of silk to produce the actual bug-catching part of the web. Fascinating stuff, I wish I had a link to the recent TED talk on it
TED: The Magnificence of Spider Silk (Score:2)
Until you mentioned it, I didn't know it existed. I think I found the link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/cheryl_hayashi_the_magnificence_of_spider_silk.html [ted.com]
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Why do those "streamers" then stick to things, though? Is it some other effect (eg static, surface tension)?
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Spiderman doesn't wear a CAPE!
Not true. Spiderman 2099 (canon) wears a web-capelet, and Spiderman Unlimited has a web cape. http://dma9fall07b.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/spiderman_unlimited.png [wordpress.com]
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You're missing the word "commonly" that is in the summary.
It is stronger than Mithril? (Score:5, Funny)
that's it? (Score:1)
All that work and _that's_ what they decide to make?
captcha: scarves
Spider Goats (Score:1)
Like aluminium I suspect (Score:5, Interesting)
Aluminium was once phenomenally rare and expensive. Napoleon had a set of highly valued plates made of the stuff. Breakthroughs in manufacturing made it a cheap, common material. I suspect this will go the same way, with synthetic versions becoming a utilitarian material among others. The cape will become an amusing historical footnote.
Washington Monument (Score:5, Informative)
Not many people know it, but the apex of the Washington Monument is made of aluminum. At the time, it was the largest piece ever crafted anywhere in the world and it was a precious metal. Only two years later, aluminum became completely worthless when the Hallâ"Héroult process for mass production of pure aluminum was discovered.
Re:Washington Monument (Score:5, Funny)
when the Hallâ"Héroult process was discovered.
Gezundheit.
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Why would we see it at all? TFA lists no practical advantage of using the material -- it was just an art project. With no advantage as a textile, it would only be useful as a luxury item anyway, and while I've no doubt that there's an eccentric millionaire or two about who might be interested in such a garment, it's no real loss for the rest of us that we're "stuck" with traditional materials.
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Spider silk is one of the strongest materials around. With an equivalent diameter, it beats out steel, carbon fiber
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I doubt that. What will really happen is some giant corporation with a lot of patent lawyers will buy the "intellectual property" of synthetic spider silk and it will remain expensive
For twenty years when the patent runs out. Inventors are much better off than artists, who have to wait 95 years to use any artistic innovations (innovations like Howlin wolf's "uh how how how" which he sucessfully sued ZZ Top for).
Twenty years isn't that long (inless you're 25), 95 years is literally FOREVER. I'll be 60 this y
Potentially fascinating only,.. (Score:4, Interesting)
What are the capabilities of this silk? How is it superior to regular silk? I see no real facts just that it's made of spider silk and took a while? It would take me a while to fasion a life size bridge out of Lego - it doesn't mean it would be stronger than a real bridge.
?
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There was a previous article showing that spider silk is stronger than steel weight for weight. Very cool and useful for a number of things.
Re:Potentially fascinating only,.. (Score:5, Informative)
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Toughness is highly desirable in body armour. If you could afford it, a bullet proof vest made from spider silk would weigh 1/5 to 1/10 as much as a comparable Kevlar Vest. Since you can't domesticate these spiders, there's no way to make production of these fibers cost effective at this time. But there certainly is a lot of interest in it.
Being weaker than steel, it's hard to imagine it would ever be used in structural applications.
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Re:Potentially fascinating only,.. (Score:4, Funny)
What are the capabilities of this silk? How is it superior to regular silk? I see no real facts just that it's made of spider silk and took a while? It would take me a while to fasion a life size bridge out of Lego - it doesn't mean it would be stronger than a real bridge.
?
But consider that a spider's web isn't lego so the real question is whether a bridge made from spiders silk would be stronger than a bridge made from lego? And if you had lego made from spiders silk, fashioned into a lego mindstorm robotic spider, would it make even stronger spidersilk lego blocks?
That why they have spiderman not legoman -- duuuuh. Lego doesn't have a spidey sense.
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I read somewhere that if you had a rope made of spider silk and thick as a paper pen you could stop a flying Boeing ...
Only if you can hold your end of it.
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Will competition doom the Cape Spiders?
"It wears you", just pay shipping and handling for a second one.
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What, pray tell, is a "paper pen" ?
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I know of plastic pens, metal pens, and a combination of the two. I don't think I've ever seen a pen (or pencil) made of paper.
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It would take me a while to fasion a life size bridge out of Lego - it doesn't mean it would be stronger than a real bridge.
Semantics nazi here.
If you built a life size bridge out of Lego it would *be* a real bridge.
That is all.
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... at least until the first breeze comes along!
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I never claimed it would be a *good* bridge.
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A real bridge made out of Lego almost certainly wouldn't be stronger, but it would still be awesome.
This one is both awesome *and* probably stronger.
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Your comment was annoying and juvenile. Best that nobody else has to see it.
I guess the same can be said about your identity.
A cape? (Score:4, Funny)
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That line alone would have been enough to make that movie good (there were plenty of other good bits, too: most definitely not the usual Hollywood used pablum).
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A motivational speaker who used a cape was short on time, so he put it on early.
When the cops stopped him, they asked if he decided to drive today.
That's interesing and all... (Score:1)
Not on display...yet (Score:2)
The article is wrong, the cape doesn't go on display until the 25th link [vam.ac.uk]. So don't pop over and try and see it until next Wednesday.
Yellow? (Score:2)
That's an understatement. I loaded the photo of that cape in Photoshop to check the value of that yellow and I got "#ZZZZ00".
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But it's beautiful (Score:1)