News Spider silk could lead to more efficient heatsinks

Honestly, we don't know where Gareth finds these stories sometimes. We're glad he does, though.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/03/07/spider-silk-heatsinks/1

 

? Breed ?

 

Clearly got food on the mind ^_^

 

All i can say is

I'm under NDA hehehehe!

 

I don't like the idea of introducing spider-based components into my computer. It could potentially lead to a nightmare spider swarm scenario when I open my case.

 

Is there anything spider silk can't do?

 

I knew about this YEARS ago. It's why I never clean my PC

 

I wonder if it'll make browsing the web faster?

 

Not to nit pick but a tiny typo:
"anchor the spider webs in pace" Pace should probably be place.

Cool article and I agree is there anything spiders can't do?

 

interesting.. spider farms

 

I can see the horrid future coming! Huge farms of genetically modified super-spiders producing thousands of tons of silk a year, prime for taking over!

 

From what I've seen of spider webs too close to my dryer exhaust, I'd say this will never work. They'd clog up in 24 hours. -But hey, Have the hive queen knit me up one anyway.

 

The problem is no-one knows how to create spider silk artificially (and you can't farm spiders: they eat each other). The material itself is vastly difficult to analyse, and all of the special properties of spider silk come from the way it's passed through the spider's spinnerets.

Once they've worked that out, unfortunately I imagine the resulting product probably has a million and one more pressing uses than as a heatsink.

 

I thought some goats had been genetically engineered to product spider silk?

(I had to try pretty hard not to say "tweaked" or "modified")

 

I'm going to have to ask you to leave.

This is very interesting. Perhaps if they were able to determine more details on how the molecular structure of the silk enabled such good heat conductance they would be able to make more refined synthetic materials so we can have non-metal heat-sinks? Or maybe water cooling tubing made out of the stuff?

 

See:

It'll be massive goat herds.

 

your coat sir

 

really neat, reminds me of an older news story about carbon nano tubes as a prospective thermal interface material. Though I really do hate constantly hearing about what is on the horizon and never seeing the cool ones come through.

 

There is a farm in the US that's worked it out, they have spliced the silk making DNA/Genes whatever ! from (I think) an Orb Weaver Spider with goats to create spider goats ! (True) (they just look like normal goats )

When the spider goats are milked, the milk gets refined and they get spools of spider silk straight out of the refined liquid !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkNEIXlt8rg Hour long documentary about it.