Marco Lo Presti of Silklab at Tufts University in the US was cleaning his glassware with acetone; he has recently been doing a project making extremely strong adhesives and suddenly noticed a web-like thing forming at the bottom of the glass.

One scientist was inspired by to engineer a substance like Peter Parker’s (otherwise known as Spiderman)’s web. “Rather than presenting this work as a bio-inspired material, it’s really a superhero-inspired material.” says Marco Lo Presti. This substance immediately solidifies when it encounters air. Spiders don’t usually shoot their webs in real life; they spin them using a gland and must have contact with a surface and “draw” the webs.

 This material is made from the boiled down cocoons of the Bombyx mori silkworm. The scientists extract the main ingredient, a protein known as silk fibroin. The scientists also added dopamine, a chemical in your brain known to cause addiction. Dopamine is also used in making adhesives. The scientists added the dopamine as the web noticed by Lo Presti formed on the glass formed over hours the dopamine appears to take the water away from the silk so that the silk can dry quicker.

To spin the web in the air, the scientists got a shooter with two holes. They then pumped acetone through one hole, and the silk and dopamine solution through the other. This made a silk web form in mid-air and stick to the object aimed at. The web’s string can be half a millimeter wide or as wide as a human hair! The scientists strengthened the substance by added chitosan, to improve the tensile strength, sourced from insect exoskeletons. They also added a type of buffer so that it made it stickier.

This silk is far from being able to carry a human or a car but let’s all hope that in the future, we can use this crazy idea as transport instead of cars, trains, motorcycles, and buses.