Science Has Finally Caught Up with Spiderman

It looks like scientists have finally caught up with Spiderman, and have learned how to create a tough spiderweb, stronger and lighter than steel. Really! In the comics, Peter Parker developed his spiderweb formula and shooters in the 1960s. Who would have thought that almost 40 years later it becomes a reality. The Reuters news story about the new science is below:

(REUTERS) LONDON - Spider silk is already tougher and lighter than steel, and now scientists have made it three times stronger by adding small amounts of metal.
The technique may be useful for manufacturing super-tough textiles and high-tech medical materials, including artificial bones and tendons. "It could make very strong thread for surgical operations," researcher Seung-Mo Lee of the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle, Germany, said in a telephone interview.
Lee and colleagues, who published their findings in the journal Science, found that adding zinc, titanium or aluminum to a length of spider silk made it more resistant to breaking or deforming. They used a process called atomic layer deposition, which not only coated spider dragline silks with metal but also caused some metal ions to penetrate the fibers and react with their protein structure.
Spider silk has long fascinated scientists but producing it in commercial quantities is difficult because spiders kept in captivity tend to eat each other.