Spiders Spin 'Silk Dope' into Nature's Toughest Material

Posted by ibobev on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @01:45PM
from the quantamagazine.org dept.

( 10 comments | 9 points | on HN )

Re:Spiders Spin 'Silk Dope' into Nature's Toughest Material by jdw64 on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @06:26PM (#50281812)

Would it be uneconomical to make clothes from spider silk? But I'm curious what kind of spider Spider Man's web comes from.

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Re:Spiders Spin 'Silk Dope' into Nature's Toughest Material by dcminter on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @06:57PM (#50282137)

Define economical :)

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Re:Spiders Spin 'Silk Dope' into Nature's Toughest Material by the__alchemist on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @07:29PM (#50282408)

This article goes into it... Need 1e6 spiders in 1e6 boxes.

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Re:Spiders Spin 'Silk Dope' into Nature's Toughest Material by Dylan16807 on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @11:37PM (#50284286)

So it's probably 100-1000x as expensive as silk? That's doable.

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Re:Spiders Spin 'Silk Dope' into Nature's Toughest Material by zardo on Thursday October 29, 2026 @12:49AM (#50284692)

Silk worms make a cocoon, for a spider you would need individually "silk" each one every few days.

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Re:Spiders Spin 'Silk Dope' into Nature's Toughest Material by phatskat on Friday October 30, 2026 @02:53PM (#50308515)

You can use spider egg sacs but it seems directly from the spider is more efficient since you don't have to wait for them to make the sac

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Re:Spiders Spin 'Silk Dope' into Nature's Toughest Material by the__alchemist on Thursday October 29, 2026 @07:28AM (#50287355)

In addition to the sibling post, silkworms don't need individual living quarters.

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Re:Spiders Spin 'Silk Dope' into Nature's Toughest Material by jibalt on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @10:53PM (#50284035)

> what kind of spider Spider Man's web comes from

Look it up ... there isn't one.

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Re:Spiders Spin 'Silk Dope' into Nature's Toughest Material by rramadass on Thursday October 29, 2026 @06:45AM (#50287003)

Also see Veritasium's excellent episode, Is Spider Web really stronger than Steel? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt4p2oalmRY

It features a company with a cool technique where Spider Silk DNA is inserted into Silkworm's DNA so you can easily farm them.

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Re:Spiders Spin 'Silk Dope' into Nature's Toughest Material by Ouman on Thursday October 29, 2026 @10:28AM (#50289687)

We've gotten very good at designing materials, but nature still has a few manufacturing tricks we haven't figured out

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