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Chemists Create World's Thinnest Spaghetti
- Gethsemane 2y agoI am a fan of the colour scheme they selected in figure 2 - very relevant. https://pubs.rsc.org/image/article/2024/na/d4na00601a/d4na00601a-f2.gif https://pubs.rsc.org/image/article/2024/na/d4na00601a/d4na00...
- ericra 2y agoGotta be honest, given much of the news I have been consuming in the past few weeks, I could read 100 articles like this. Concise, well-written, interesting and about potentially useful research... And the prospect of helping wounds heal with nano spaghetti is just cool
- ggm 2y ago> The researchers also had to carefully warm up the mixture for several hours before slowly cooling it back down to make sure it was the right consistency. Always got to let the nano-gluten relax. I hope they used phosphor bronze extruding electrostatic fields. The sauce needs the rough edges to coat.
- ackbar03 2y agoDid the Italians greenlight this?
- brookst 2y agoNo, it was a pomodoro sauce
- ggm 2y ago"did you use Tipo 00 flour" -no I used tipo 00000000000000000000000000000000 flour.
- lowestprimate 2y agoThanks for afternoon laugh!
- taitems 2y agoIf CNT (Carbon Nanotubes) are displaying similar risk factors to asbestos, what is the scale difference between these? I've never felt so compelled to eat something that could kill me.
- StringyBob 2y agoThis spaghetti also reminding me of a scene from the three body problem (trying to avoid spoilers)
- aloha2436 2y agoI believe the issue with CNTs and asbestos is that once they're in your lungs, your body won't be able to break it down. This is literally made of flour.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoThis. Asbestos is like having glass shards that are so sharp they keep damaging cells and never go away. Constant cellular repair statistically results in cancer.
- graypegg 2y agoI assume it's orders of magnitude better than asbestos obviously, since flour is organic and decomposes, but it still doesn't seem great. If the particulate is this small, it can probably get pretty deep into your lungs and just sit there for a while. I'm no expert, but I don't know what would decompose flour in your lungs, especially if it's going to get deeper being so light and tiny. Like it's not asbestos, but it's also not air. So maybe nanopasta comes with an MSDS binder.
- shepherdjerred 2y agoBakers have been around for a long time w/ plenty of exposure to airborne flour. I wonder if they tend to have lung issues like similar trades do.
- boomboomsubban 2y agoMentioned in the article, the second thinnest spaghetti https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20161014-the-secret-behind-italys-rarest-pasta https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20161014-the-secret-behin...
- recursivecaveat 2y agoI first learned of this pasta from this video: https://youtu.be/O5JyezoCTJs https://youtu.be/O5JyezoCTJs Apparently they are up from 3 to 7 people who can make it now.
- WillyWonkaJr 2y ago"In the last few years, Italy’s premier food and wine magazine, Gambero Rosso, has invited her to Rome twice so they can film her preparing the dish." I breathed a sigh of relief when I read this. It does make me wonder what marvelous skills have been lost to time because of secrecy or difficulty in recording the process.
- black_puppydog 2y agoWell, the rest of the article basically describes how anyone else but her seemed to uninterested in investing the time and energy to learn and make this pasta or, when interested, found themselves unable to. Including chefs, scientists, and "Barilla Engineers" (prbly one of the coolest or at least most wholesome engineering positions IMHO) So a video in itself might not be enough...
- consf 2y ago[dead]
- fluoridation 2y ago>It does make me wonder what marvelous skills have been lost to time because of secrecy or difficulty in recording the process. It's okay. Sturgeon's law applies uniformly, so almost all of it is of no note whatsoever.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rvba 2y agoSo those joke videos to use ramen noodles as fiber and superglue were kind of real?
- karmakurtisaani 2y agoA strong contender for the Ig Nobel prize.
- consf 2y agoWhat really stands out to me is the potential for real-world applications, particularly in medicine
- inanutshellus 2y agosince publicly calling out "this smells like a robot" just makes the robots sneakier... what's the alternative? :ponder:
- mandmandam 2y agoIdk man but that one smells alright. I know we're not supposed to mention it, but it's getting distinctly whiffy on this forum in general lately. Dunno if this arms race can be won by the wet brains.
- consf 2y ago[dead]
- fedeb95 2y agothey just had to look at my code.
- latexr 2y ago> The world's thinnest spaghetti, about 200 times thinner than a human hair, has been created by a UCL-led research team. The spaghetti is not intended to be a new food but was created because of the wide-ranging uses that extremely thin strands of material, called nanofibers, have in medicine and industry. This is a fantastic first paragraph, which unfortunately is not the norm. It succinctly explains what was created (world's thinnest spaghetti), the scale at which it is impressive (200 times thinner than a human hair), who did it (a UCL-led research team), and why it matters (the second sentence) while simultaneously explaining what it is not for that most people would think about. It’s impossible to provide every minute detail in one short paragraph, but that one is dense with information, clear, and gives you an immediate sense if the article is of interest to you. Kudos to the University College London. Though I’d like to be more specific and know exactly who wrote/edited that.
- thesuitonym 2y agoMy only complaint with it is that they use the acronym UCL without defining it.
- ASalazarMX 2y agoI understand why you complain, but UCL is obviously an acronym of a university, and most people won't care much which specific university did this. The ones that do can readily find it. I'm much more annoyed when three-letter jargon with more than one meaning is used without context.
- ranit 2y agoImmediately under the title you will find: > by University College London Therefore repetition may not be necessary.
- Stedag 2y agoI read the parent as sarcasm and chuckled.
- hammock 2y ago
- sumosudo 2y agoWhat's the cooking time?
- JimmyWilliams1 2y ago[flagged]
- PaulHoule 2y agoSee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrospinning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrospinning
- qrush 2y agoSo what, no fuckin' chemical ziti now?
- the-chitmonger 2y agoI'm nowhere near an expert on this subject, but I've heard that E. coli can be a serious issue with uncooked flour. Not sure if anyone else was concerned about these flour nano-noodles touching wounds (as they're not cooked, per se), but from what I can tell, these noodles are only 372 nm wide[0] while E. coli is something on the order of 2,000 nm (2 micrometers) in length[1]. It could also be that the electrospinning process separates these threads from any contaminants(?) I'd love to hear someone with more familiarity on the subject give their take. [0]: TFA - https://phys.org/news/2024-11-chemists-world-thinnest-spaghetti.html https://phys.org/news/2024-11-chemists-world-thinnest-spaghe... [1]: https://www.britannica.com/science/bacteria/Diversity-of-structure-of-bacteria https://www.britannica.com/science/bacteria/Diversity-of-str...
- TZubiri 2y agoFinally string theorists found real world business applications
- mandmandam 2y ago> Professor Williams added, "I don't think it's useful as pasta, sadly, as it would overcook in less than a second, before you could take it out of the pan." Jeeze, talk about trying nothing and all out of ideas. You can make 372 nanometer pasta, but can't conceive of cooking times under a second? I want nano pasta god dammit. Blast that nano spaghetti with atomized tomato steam and flash freeze it; zap it with a laser and run it through Bose-Einsten condensate; sous vide it in some lil carbon nanotubes; whatever you gotta do.
- robblbobbl 2y agoSpaghetti thumbs up
- overcast 2y agoAs if angel hair pasta wasn't already an abomination! :D
- jihadjihad 2y agoI'm not the biggest fan of angel hair either, but one thing that it does have going for it is that it cooks about as fast as fresh pasta, like 2-3 mins. It's no bucatini but in a pinch or with small hungry humans to feed it's nice to have around.
- emmelaich 2y agoI have to be very care buying spaghetti, because I have to carefully avoid tubular, thin, instant, spaghettoni, etc. As well as fettuccine and others because they're in similar packaging. My family is distraught if they get served anything other than the standard no.4 spaghetti!
- eddieh 2y agoExactly this! And you have to expect that as the diameter approaches zero your pasta becomes indistinguishable from a gelatinous lump of gluten aka paste.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mindslight 2y agoNo respect unless they find a way to make a small hole down the middle. Bucatini, our love affair was short but intense. Please come back.