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No One Is Prepared for Hagfish Slime (2019)
- mrfusion 6y agoSo what are some cool applications of this?
- el_don_almighty 6y agoFirst aid for burns. Imagine an ointment tube of this that you could immediately apply to large burns then simply add water and create a sterile coverage for moisture retention under bandages
- mrfusion 6y agoSpacecraft re-entry?
- imglorp 6y agoFirefighting gel
- brentonator 6y ago...of doom.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoSpace structures?
- mrfusion 6y agoIntriguing, explain.
- gostsamo 6y agoNot gp, but the protein structure implies the ability to fold materials and expand them really fast. It might be helpful in designing new space habitats. Alternatively, the proteins could be used to contain liquids in zero gravity. If you have a way to extract the proteins, you are left again with just water.
- gonzo41 6y agoThis probably wouldn't work. It's a biological system, so past a pretty tight temperature range the weak bonding forces of the protiens will denature, or lock up from the cold.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoRapid deployment of large structures in zero gravity?
- ur-whale 6y agoI'm thinking Halloween prank.
- Daub 6y agoFlat pack construction?
- starpilot 6y agoCurrency?
- nxpnsv 6y agoCrypto slime hag tokens
- altcognito 6y agoI wonder if it could be used as a barrier in oil spills or other applications. Could be cheap, biodegradable and compact.
- Koala_ice 6y agoSome of my friends are implementing a blobchain using it.
- Igelau 6y agoProof of Slime. I can see the headlines now: Sunk Cost - Blobchain Miner Cracks Foundation in Massive Slime Spill
- xwkd 6y agoAs I was reading, I thought the article was about to answer this. I guess I have to add “No One is Prepared” to my mental clickbait filter now.
- chrisgd 6y agoThe way they talked about it expanding and it’s softness I thought it was a new crash absorption technology like in Demolition Man (the movie with Bullock, Stallone and Snipes) where it instantly fills the car
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoProbably industrial surface coatings, paints, epoxies, sealants, greases, etc where you need to obtain certain mechanical properties from the fluid using the least volume possible (because every bit of additive is displacing the product that does the real work).
- mrfusion 6y agoNeat ideas! Perhaps engine oil?
- vagrantJin 6y agoBearing lube?
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoOrganic stuff doesn't tend to like non-earthly levels of heat so doubtful except maybe to add clingyness to some low temperature greases.
- pvaldes 6y agosea-bag for cars?
- Igelau 6y agoI kind of want to know what happens if you eat it. It probably puts psyllium husk to shame.
- nate_meurer 6y agoNothing, that's what happens. The fish slime is almost entirely water, with only milligrams of protein in it, which you digest just as though you'd eaten a tiny bit of egg. Koreans eat quite a bit of hagfish. It's just seafood. Psyllium fiber is an indigestible carbohydrate, usually consumed in quantities thousands of times greater than the amount of protein in fish slime.
- dekhn 6y agoI've been trying to get some of my friends to make hagfish jelly.
- dennisnedry 6y agoThe US Navy has figured out a way to create the slime in a lab - https://newatlas.com/hagfish-slime-us-navy/47544/ https://newatlas.com/hagfish-slime-us-navy/47544/ They’re hoping to use it for shark repellent and ballistic defense.
- clort 6y agoI wonder if you could throw it in the water while running away from other ships or submarines; if you can gum up their propellors thats going to be pretty useful
- tyingq 6y agoRiot control maybe? A water cannon injecting this stuff into the stream would be intimidating.
- hkarthik 6y agoWeb like projectiles to grapple and swing around NYC sky scrapers?
- sslayer 6y agoAt the end of the article there was mention of a fossil, and they seemed to imply that they retrieved chemical samples from it,did I miss something or is that a thing now?
- ufo 6y agoExtracting DNA from fossils is actually a thing now, in certain extraordinarily rare circumstances. However, that's not the case here. The genetic studies that the news piece mentioned were carried out in present-day hagfish and present-day vertebrates. The scientific contoversy is that some taxonomies based of genetics classified hagfish as a kind of vertebrate, while taxonomies based on other methods might classify them as a seperate branch of the tree which split off before vertebrates. What the new fossil showed is an example of an animal that appears to be a hagfish with some features that are characteristic of vertebrates. This is more in line with the theory that hagfish are a kind of vertebrate.
- tsimionescu 6y agoI think the poster above is referring to the observation in the article that they found traces of chemicals suggesting that the fossil had a similar slime to modern hagfish.
- hoseja 6y agoProteins can be extraordinarily stable.
- sly010 6y agoAnyone else wanted more on the car covered in slime on a highway?
- Nelkins 6y agohttps://twitter.com/ORStatePolice/status/885597812980711424 https://twitter.com/ORStatePolice/status/885597812980711424
- creeble 6y agoI kinda want more on why there exists a truckload of hagfish.
- mattrick 6y agoIt says in the article: > The animals were destined for South Korea, where they are eaten as a delicacy
- elchief 6y agoI'm not sure I could cope with that. Getting in an accident with a truck is terrifying. But then to be washed over in fish slime?
- perihelions 6y agoThis is indeed astonishing: it seems you can dramatically change the mechanical properties of water with only trace amounts of a protein additive, measured in parts per million... "Astonishingly, to create a liter of slime, a hagfish has to release only 40 milligrams of mucus and protein—1,000 times less dry material than human saliva contains. That’s why the slime, though strong and elastic enough to coat a hand, feels so incorporeal."
- robocat 6y ago1 litre is 1kg of water = 1_000_000 milligrams. So 40mg is approximately 40 parts per million. Indeed, very impressive. The protein is likely a bit denser than water (e.g. a steak sinks in water).
- rectang 6y ago> a bottlenose dolphin with a hagfish stuck in its blowhole ugh ugh ugh
- SirSavary 6y agoIt's okay, the study followed up with the dolphin and found it to be healthy and no longer hosting a guest
- mnemotronic 6y agoI, for one, welcome our new airway clogging overlords.
- breatheoften 6y agoI participated in an ecological impact study off the coast of guam once upon a time and we pulled a couple of these up from the sea floor in deep sea traps ... the amount of slime covering the back deck was truly astonishing ... they also have really freaky mouths -- a circle of teeth on a squishy stalk reminiscent of the inner mouth from the movie Aliens ...
- rozab 6y agoThey are freakily alien. Hagfish and lampreys (the jawless fish) are in a separate group to all other vertebrates that split off before jaws evolved. Even weird fish like seahorses are more closely related to us than these creatures. It's fascinating to me that these species have held on all this time, given that jaws were such a wildly successful adaptation.
- cgriswald 6y agoThe mouth reminds me more of the byrum (AKA “shitweasel”) from Dreamcatcher.
- burlesona 6y agoVery interesting article with a silly clickbait title. Although I admit, the correct title, "Hagfish Slime is interesting," is probably less effective :D
- SavantIdiot 6y agoWhy is every weird fish a delicacy in Southeast/East Asia? : We got this poison puffer fish... delicacy We got the fin off a dying shark... delicacy We got this slime spewing eel thing... delicacy
- smnrchrds 6y agoThat's not just an Asian thing. Fermented seafood delicacies from Scandinavia are even more counter-intuitive.
- kleton 6y agoLamprey, a related fish, is a delicacy in many places in Europe.
- renewiltord 6y agoIt's a good question. There are few things that are eaten in the West that aren't eaten in the East. Perhaps there is more readily available biodiversity in warmer lands / waters. Perhaps food taboos did not evolve as much in the East because fresh food is readily available and food taboos are primarily in order to protect from parasites, etc.
- mnemotronic 6y agoBrood-X will start appearing in weeks ahead in Eastern US. BIG marketing opportunity.
- unhammer 6y agoThey were voted the national fish of Norway, after some biology students organised to take over a phone-in radio contest :) (Also, a slime researcher called "Fudge"? More evidence for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism !)
- usefulcat 6y ago“Hagfish produce slime the way humans produce opinions—readily, swiftly, defensively, and prodigiously.”
- starpilot 6y agoI am prepared.
- pomian 6y agoGreat article. But if you look at the videos, it is even more amazing. Chemical engineers dream. The microscopic view of the slime, appearing as thread in a bundle, is phenomenal. How? So much? So fast? What can we make with this knowledge?
- mnemotronic 6y agoLoad up a firetruck of the stuff & use it for crowd control.