Sept. 17, 2007 — Peter Parker wannabes: listen up. A scientist has come up with a Spiderman suit design that could have you fighting crime and rescuing damsels in no time.
The design proposes using the self-cleaning, adhesive power of engineered molecules known as carbon nanotubes to produce gloves and boots that would allow a person to cling to walls and sling invisible cable that would afford skyscraper-swinging.
And although the scheme may not supplant Spidey's superhero skills, it could form the theoretical basis for wall-clinging suits that could be used on Earth and in space.
"It's the possibility of a Spiderman suit," said Nicola Pugno, professor of structural mechanics at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy, who published the research in the Institute of Physics' Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter .
"You need formulas to give you guidelines in order to suggest how you have to perform the experiments."
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Pugno's inspiration for the suit comes not so much from spiders but from geckos, lizards renowned for their ability to grip any surface and the way they can hang from a ceiling even by one toe.
