Shirts that stop bullets

ScienCentralNews ^ | 7/24/03 | Ann Marie Cunningham

[LibWhacker]

What if you could wear lightweight armor that kept you warm – and let you phone home? Nanotechnologists have come up with a super strong, flexible fiber that can conduct heat and electricity. It could be made into a modern version of chain mail, the heavy metal mesh worn by medieval knights. If woven from the new fiber, modern chain mail could be light as a cotton shirt, but bulletproof.

Molecular Chain Mail

Over hundreds of millions of years of evolution, many animals, plants, and natural materials have developed extraordinary properties. Spider silk, for example, is five times tougher than steel. (Toughness is defined as the measure of the energy needed to break a fiber.) Some nanotechnologists would like to make synthetic yarn with the same toughness as spider silk.

At the NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas, a research team headed by Institute director Ray H. Baughman has spun a new lightweight fiber that the scientists say is the toughest known. Their new fiber is four times tougher than spider silk, and 17 times tougher than Kevlar, now used to make bulletproof vests. The team’s key ingredient is tiny carbon nanotubes, miniscule rolled-up sheets of carbon atoms that can be found naturally in soot.

Since carbon nanotubes were discovered in 1991, their enormous promise has intrigued nanotechnologists. Carbon nanotubes are light and flexible, but enormously strong. They also can conduct heat and electricity. Many researchers want to make them into much larger materials with the same useful properties. But because individual carbon nanotubes are very short, they are difficult to align properly into an unbroken yarn, and if they are combined with plastics or other binding materials, they tend to lump together.

Strings of the nanotube fiber.

The new fiber, says chemist John Ferraris, a member of the research team, is “probably one of the first realizations of taking something that has phenomenal properties at the nanoscale, and actually converting it into something that has size that you can do something with.” To make carbon-nanotube fibers, some researchers have tried pulling out threads from bundles of the nanotubes, like drawing silk thread from a cocoon. But the Texas scientists turned to spinning, a method of working with carbon nanotubes originally developed in France.

The Texas group combines carbon nanotubes with water and a plastic. Materials scientist Alan Dalton says the method works because the particular plastic has “an affinity for water and it likes carbon nanotubes. When we assemble the fibers, the polymer latches on to the surface of the nanotubes and forms a gel.” Then the researchers spin the gel—70 times faster than their French counterparts did—to produce long, continuous fibers.

Ferraris explains that this approach allows the researchers to tailor the fibers by adjusting the ratio of carbon nanotubes to plastic, or changing the plastic slightly. The result is fibers with “a wide range of properties that we can actually maximize. We can maximize strength, or toughness, or electrical conductivity or charge-storage capacity” without sacrificing the fiber’s other properties. Ferraris foresees the fiber, which is easy to weave and sew, being woven into “a multifunctional fabric” that could protect wearers as well as provide warmth and telecommunications.

He predicts that antennae and batteries, sensors and electronic connections could be wired into a lightweight military uniform. As so often happens with military wear, the fiber also could be made into fashionable street wear.

At present, however, the major obstacle is the steep price of carbon nanotubes—as high as $15,000 an ounce. The new fiber won’t be widely available until prices drop considerably—and that isn’t likely for another five to ten years.

Dalton, Ferraris, Baughman, and other UTD team members’ work has appeared in Nature, June 12, 2003. Their research is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

[Atlas Sneezed]

You make good points. It's easy to imagine a "T-shirt" vest that allows the round to make a bloody bone-fragmented pulp of the first inch of tissue (of your ribcage, for example.)

Even that would be preferable to penetration of cardiac tissue.

Of course, the moment such a shirt is developed, it will be illegal for any of use to possess.

But imagine long johns that protected the femoral artery, groin, arms, and even neck, compared to the little chest and back zones that are protected by current vests. The risk of a battle-field bleed-out would be vastly reduced.

For brief tactical events, a flak vest could be added.

[Billthedrill]

Think I will like Diamond Age?

It's a think piece, and it left a lot of critics cold because there were too darn many ideas per page and the ending was a bit enigmatic. That said, it is absolutely brilliant on many levels (and it has many levels). I think I still have a review out on Amazon if you want more details. It's basically (on the lowest level) the story of what you would do if you were a genius programmer and you had a daughter you knew you'd never see, and how you'd prepare her to survive and prevail in a savage and violent world, with an interactive storybook. (That's why the subtitle is "A Young Lady's Primer.") On another level it's about the future of technology, humanity...not too ambitious, hmm? It even has sex and guns. What more could you want?

[KCmark]

Wasn't sure if I was seeing something funny or not. I did laugh when I saw it.

[DannyTN]

I want them to create fibers that maximize the electrical capacity of the fiber. Then I'll buy my daughter dresses made of them and any guy that touches her will be electrocuted.

[RadioAstronomer]

I want them to create fibers that maximize the electrical capacity of the fiber. Then I'll buy my daughter dresses made of them and any guy that touches her will be electrocuted.

ROFL! Hope she remembers to turn it off before you try to give her a hug. :-)

[Larry Lucido]

I think I've tried to open potato chip bags made of this stuff.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Aww...it's been done. Ever heard of "mithril"?

Mithril
Most precious of metals

Pronunciation:	mee'threel
Meaning:	Approximately 'mist-glitter'1
Other Names:	Moria-silver, Truesilver

Also called 'truesilver', and many other names besides; the remarkable metal that the Dwarves discovered in the mines of Khazad-dûm. It was supple and easy to work, and could be polished to shimmer like silver that never tarnished, and it was as strong as steel. In Middle-earth, mithril was found nowhere but the Dwarf-mines of Khazad-dûm, though there are indications that it was also found in Númenor and in Aman.

The metal held a value almost beyond price. In Númenor, King Tar-Telemmaitë became so greedy for mithril that it gave him his name - Telemmaitë means 'silverhand'. In Middle-earth, meanwhile, the Dwarves' discovery of mithril drew the Noldor to found the kingdom of Eregion in the lands west of their mines. As the years passed, the seams beneath Khazad-dûm began to be worked out, and the Dwarves dug deeper and deeper. It was their deep mining for mithril that would awake the Balrog, Durin's Bane, and bring about the downfall of their kingdom.

Of all the mithril artefacts, the most famous is surely the coat of mail given to Bilbo Baggins by Thorin Oakenshield, that was held for a while in the Michel Delving mathom-house before being worn by Frodo during the Quest of Mount Doom. Many other of the World's most important items were made of mithril, too. The symbol of High Kingship worn by Elendil and Isildur was the Elendilmir, a diamond bound to the brow by a mithril fillet, and Nenya, one of the Three Rings of the Elves, was also made of the metal, again bearing a diamond. Greatest of all, according to legend, was the ship of Eärendil in which he sailed into the sky, making the gleam of truesilver visible to the world as the Evening and Morning Star.

[Atlas Sneezed]

"It even has sex and guns. What more could you want?"

'nuff said. But seriously, if I thought Snow... was silly, but Crypt... was smart, you think I'd like it?

[Atlas Sneezed]

With this technology, one can envision invisible "helmet wigs", and facial masks that are concealed by makeup mud. Even eyewear with window screen-type transvisible ballistic protection.

(An idea for your slightly-in-the-future next novel. Have you received my order for multiple copies of your new novel yet? I got the order information from your website at http://matthewbracken.web.aplus.net/ )

[gwmoore]

bump for later read

Greg

[Ichneumon]

But seriously, if I thought Snow... was silly, but Crypt... was smart, you think I'd like it?

I guess that depends on why exactly you thought Snowcrash was "silly". I really liked it (and all his books), personally. If you liked Cryptonomicon because it was mostly historical-and-present-day tech, and disliked Snowcrash because it was too "out there" futuristically, you may not like The Diamond Age either, as it's almost as futuristic as Snowcrash (although in very different ways, and is placed in a very different projection of future society).

On the other hand, if you disliked the "playfulness" of Snowcrash but didn't mind the futurism, you'll probably like the Diamond Age more, because it's more "serious" and gritty.

Meanwhile, the same author's least-known book, "Zodiac", is a hell of a lot of fun too, and well worth a read (it's a lot smaller than his other books also, so it's a good "Sunday by the pool" book). Be warned, the hero works for an ecological activism group and the bad guys are a big genetic engineering megacorp, but that *doesn't* mean that the plot (or the situations) are as cookie-cutter as you'd think from that synopsis. It manages to poke a lot of fun at the eco-nut movement along the way. Even the protagonist sometimes calls the people he works for "duck squeezers" (which I presume is a variation on "tree hugger"), and the book makes it clear he's the only one with any real sense in the group.

[Centurion2000]

bump

[D Rider]

"If this stuff is that tough, it might be layered on some sort of existing armor. As long as the armor couldn't shatter underneath the cloth, it would work."

That's exactly what I was thinking! Like laminating this stuff over 1/2" steel plate.

[Consort]

It was a play on words.

[4mycountry]

If woven from the new fiber, modern chain mail could be light as a cotton shirt, but bulletproof.

Sounds like Lord of the Rings to me!

Mithril. Niiiiice.

[KCmark]

Well, there is such a mix here on FR that I didn't know if some scientist was trying to dumb it down, or if it was funny. Both types abound here. One of my favorite threads was of a math teacher who was arrested for (suspected) being part of the Al-Gebra group. Freepers were so funny that night.

[SandyEgo]

heheheh - we've gotta hear more from you.

[Travis McGee]

Howdy. I got yer order, now the book is in the hands of the printer, having gone through the final proofs and corrections. I'll be out of town from 5-12 August, and soon after that I should have the books and begin my marathon of autorgraphing and shipping envelope stuffing. (There are folks who have been waiting since January. I was way over optimistic in my estimate of time to completion.)

[honeygrl]

"Some nanotechnologists would like to make synthetic yarn with the same toughness as spider silk."

Hey maybe I can crochet some bullet proof sweaters and caps with this stuff! lol

[Travis McGee]

But the shield is doing pretty well for the moment.