Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon

MIT Technology Review ^ | 5-6-2015

[moose07]

...where else are the accumulating?

The opposite (Alleged) effect to DDT.
Birds reinvent the mallet to enable the chicks to escape from the Egg.

Seriously, you do have a very good point there.

[piasa]

Well, you know, the meek will inherit the Earth. We just didn’t know until now how it could come about...

[piasa]

There are challenges ahead, of course. Nobody has discovered an efficient way to harvest spider silk, although not for lack of trying.

Hummingbirds have been harvesting spider silk for ages...

[null and void]

A single layer of graphite has the carbon atoms arranged in hexagons.

It you magnified it A LOT it would look a bit like a sheet of chicken wire fencing.

Now imagine you cut off a few inches of chicken wire and rolled it into a tube and lined up and welded the raw ends.

You'd have a tough, flexible tube.

Shrink it back down and make the wires strong carbon-carbon bonds, and you've got one heck of a robust material!