Like many a geek, I saw “Return of the King” several times in the theater. On one of the return viewings, I happened to be sitting one row in front of and three or four seats down from a woman who clearly had a serious problem with spiders. Which kinda sucked for her, since Shelob the giant evil spider got a fair amount of screen time. It was actually more entertaining to watch the freakout than the screen when Shelob was out and about. Funny as hell.
I suspect that that woman might have just as much trouble with this particular eight-legged critter:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9001000/9001866.stm
A newly discovered species of spider living in Madagascar makes the world’s longest known web, spanning 25m. … Darwin’s bark spider, a species new to science, weaves its huge web over flowing rivers, stretching from bank to bank.
Yeah…. no thanks.
Perhaps usefully, this newly discovered spider produces silk that turns out to be the strongest biological structural material yet discovered. Some genetic engineering and some interesting chemical setups, perhaps some weird genegineered bacteria modified to produce the spider silk proteins, and Kevlar might find itself obsolete.
11 Responses to “Show This Article To An Arachnophobe”
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I was expecting the spider itself to be pretty exotic looking, but it just looks like a barn spider: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/photogalleries/100917-darwins-bark-spider-new-species-spider-webs-madagascar-science-pictures-strongest/#/huge-spider-webs-close-up-darwinia_26174_600x450.jpg
In the 1990s, when I was a Ph.D. student at the Lab of Laser Energetics in the Univ. of Rochester, NY there was a ‘Spider Farm’ building with ‘wranglers’ harvesting silk for supporting laser fusion target pellets inside the ICF chamber.
This material was the only one wich preserved its elasticity at cryogenic temperatures–DT ices.
I believe this ‘farm’ is not there any more.
Nice stuff and very engagging blog. One of my favorite bookmarks.
Also looking for a job without any luck.
Argentine ICF physicists are not welcomed to the USA, even after the DoE spent U$ 400,000 in my education and the Navy (NRL Directed energy stuff and ICF), the Air Force (ABL, laser propulsion), Los Alamos/Sandia (ICF, laser-plasma physics) plus SAIC/Xon-Tech and so many orgwes wanted my services.
According to the NCIS I am not ‘good enough’ for a Green Card, and nerdy obese, thick-bespectacled, Hispanics of German descent can not marry American women–even nerdy MD students from WA. 8-(
If someday I land a proper paying job I would be spending some serious $$$ in your wares; first in line for your NPP book (although someday I hope you will buy my ICF-NPP/laser propulsion technical treatises!).
Still waiting for the Saturn V big book… 8=)
Thanks and best regards!
> According to the NCIS I am not ‘good enough’ for a Green Card
To be blunt, entering the US legally seems to be doing it the wrong way. Just sneak across the border, and soon enough the government will declare you a US citizen.
It is the web that is huge. The spider seems not to be particularly big – body minus legs 2 cm long. I have been observing a spider on our balcony for the past few weeks and she must now be at least 15 mm long. I haven’t seen her today and she is possibly hiding in the flowers and moulting after a recent large meal: a moth for breakfast and a wasp for lunch.
The other night night I heard a weird clicking sound in the corner of the bedroom. When I turned the flashlight on it I saw a spider trying to haul a small beetle away for a snack. The problem was that the beetle had other dinner plans and was trying to make a break for it. Either that or trying to eat the spider.
Across a river? That brings to mind that Far Side cartoon where the two spiders spin the web across the bottom of the slide, one saying to the other “If we pull this off we’ll eat like kings!”
Jim
The strongest biological material …? The Far Side…? I’d take a couple of the animals as pets here if I could get them to capture and eat the college students and the wandering ghetto rats.
Michael: This one.
Jim
I think I may know how it gets the web across the river.
Baby spiders distribute themselves across the landscape by “ballooning”
They spin out a thin web strand many feet long on a hot still day and let the thermal air currents catch it and carry them aloft still attached to it till they land somewhere else (which can be many, many miles away) and detach it from themselves.
This spider may climb up the tree on one side of the river, wait for a wind blowing towards the other side, release a strand of web to get captured by a tree on the other side, and then carefully crawl across it, laying a heavier strand behind it as it moves. Once it has gone back and forth a few times laying the heavy “bridge cable”, it can then start building the finished web using it as the main support.
Regarding getting a Green Card for a German attempting to move into the US from Mexico…yes, that will be tough after The Zimmermann Telegram…you may be trying to invade under orders from the Kaiser.
http://rutlandhs.k12.vt.us/jpeterso/MOREWW1/ZMMRMN.JPG
In fact, this treachery on the part of The Hun may not yet be over; would any of us be surprised if a strange Twitter from Chancellor Merkel to President Calderón were revealed, again promising the same areas of the US?
I think not.
One day soon, you may go into a Tex-Mex restaurant and find the tacos now have sauerkraut and dark mustard on them.
…food for that German fifth column already infiltrated into the US.
Now I’m wondering what a pumpernickel tortilla would taste like were it filled with kosher beef, sauerkraut, and topped with dark mustard.
As I recall, most of the Operation Paperclip persons came through the consulate at Juarez.
Thanks, Jim. I used to show that one to my two children, who always avoided slides after that.
By a coincidence, a friend borrowed me a new book yesterday (“Lost States”) about US states that were proposed but never came into existence for one reason or another (East Dakota – West Dakota? Huh?) and one of the things that’s in there is a proposed German colony from 1842 that would be smack-dab in the middle of Texas, named Adelsverein:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelsverein