'Bullet-Proof Skin', Made With Spider Silk And Goat's Milk, Created By Scientists

Imagine having a gun fired at you, the bullet whizzing toward you at a super-fast speed. But instead of the bullet piercing your skin and traveling deep inside your body, what if it instead repelled off your skin?

What sounds like a scenario straight out of a superhero movie or a sci-fi novel could eventually become reality. Scientists have created a skin made with goat's milk packed with spider-silk proteins, according to news reports. Their hope is that they can eventually replace the keratin in human skin -- which makes it tough -- with the spider-silk proteins.

To make the bullet-proof material, Dutch scientists first engineered goats to produce milk that contains proteins from extra-strong spider silk. Then, using the milk from the goats, they spun a bullet-proof material; a layer of real human skin is then grown around that skin, a process that takes five weeks, the Daily Mail reported.

"Science-fiction? Maybe, but we can get a feeling of what this transhumanistic idea would be like by letting a bulletproof matrix of spidersilk merge with an in vitro human skin," researcher Jalila Essaidi told the Daily Mail.

Does it work? Well, the skin is only able to stop bullets fired at reduced speeds, TechNewsDaily reported. It was not able to stop a bullet from a .22 caliber rifle shot at a normal speed, which is the required standard for today's bulletproof vests.

The skin is currently on display at the National Natural History Museum Naturalis in Leiden, Netherlands, until Jan. 8, 2012, TechNewsDaily reported.

More research must be done before this bullet-proof "super skin" can actually be possible to engineer into humans.

Comments

[tman418]

03:34 PM on 08/29/2011

Damn! Super-soldiers are on their way.

[Inannawhimsey]

05:10 AM on 08/28/2011

Life imitates art (in this case, Cyberpunk 2020) :3

[Ken Scherer]

10:16 PM on 08/20/2011

Our military could clone an army of bullet proof Storm Troopers who are better than the ones in Star Wars!!! Oh, boy, the ethics debate about that idea must be mind-blowing. The mere fact (?) that such a thing could be possible is freak'n awesome!

[aquietbluebird]

10:42 AM on 08/20/2011

What if someone with "bullet-proof" skin one day needed a c-section? Or heart surgery? The ability to cut through skin is sometimes vitally important. How would they even get vaccinated or have blood tests without a syringe piercing them?

I'm fascinated by the science behind this research, but I'm not sure it's wise to apply this to humans. Especially since a forceful enough blow would kill them anyways, whether it punctured the skin or not.

[Dhakevin]

12:29 PM on 08/26/2011

It will be the start of armor piercing medical equipment and bullets making the bullet proof skin obsolete.

[hillbillet]

03:16 PM on 08/19/2011

This seems very dangerous and not quite bright. What happens when the human body rejects the spider/goat components and suffers massive organ(skin) failure? I cannot see this as something anyone would want for any reason.

[kmsprez1]

03:11 PM on 08/19/2011

Thank you all. you made me laugh..........you guys are clever and funny as hell.......

[pezdrake]

01:42 PM on 08/19/2011

OPEN LETTER TO SCIENTISTS TAMPERING IN GOD'S DOMAIN:

I am willing to sign up for experiments to make myself into a superhuman. Contact me through HP. Thanks,
signed, aspiring superhero.

[BlackJeremiah]

01:39 PM on 08/19/2011

Once everyone's bulletproof, maybe we can go back to stabbing each other like civilized people.

[mbkeefer]

02:09 PM on 08/19/2011

Now there is an idea!

[Kletok Nikto]

03:50 PM on 08/20/2011

Yep. You don't have to reload a knife. 8-D

[SOD]

01:13 AM on 08/20/2011

In the nations with inordinate firearm regulation they never stopped stabbing each other like civilized folk.

[bmitche]

01:26 PM on 08/19/2011

"only able to stop bullets fired at reduced speed" Ever little bit helps!

[pezdrake]

01:42 PM on 08/19/2011

Okay so I'll have two!

[AppleBaby]

01:18 PM on 08/19/2011

I want one!!!! ME!! ME!! ME!!!

[baydolphins]

01:18 PM on 08/19/2011

I'm guessing this is a good thing, especially maybe for burn victims etc. and police, soldiers...but what about the bad guys, the drug lord types with all the money that would be the first in line for a whole new skin? Something about it is just a little creepy.

[SOD]

01:15 AM on 08/20/2011

If you put a 30-06 round in the right place, no amount of bullet proof skin will matter.

[badhog8]

01:12 PM on 08/19/2011

what is the porpose for this?

[AppleBaby]

01:18 PM on 08/19/2011

really?

[airmikee99]

01:42 PM on 08/19/2011

Read up on the concept of weapons. Then read up on the concept of armor.

Does it make more sense now?

[badhog8]

10:31 AM on 08/20/2011

no

[Lexy-Girl 1991]

12:52 PM on 08/19/2011

Is it sad the first thing i really thought of when i listened to the video was
"oh great, lets make bullet proof humans so that when a zombie apocalypse hits the survivors can't kill them, because that sounds like a fantastic idea."

i find this a very bad idea x.x;

[capers2]

12:30 PM on 08/19/2011

News flash, all you criminals out there you need to take some of the gun power out of your buleits.

[agt4085]

12:07 PM on 08/19/2011

This is a useless story. It even says at the end the bullets had to have reduced powder load. Plus it's a 22 cal. the smallest. Bullet proof vests standards are 9mm. Not 22 cal.

[mbkeefer]

02:20 PM on 08/19/2011

The 22 cal in the standard. You want to punch a hole through a flexible sheet. Which is going to work better, the small end or the wide end of pool cue? The small end of the pool cue is the 22 and the wide end is the 9mm and about half the velocity of the 22.

[scoobysncs4u]

11:40 AM on 08/20/2011

I guess you can make up any formula like a child without knowledge. If you forget to add MASS you don't have a formula. I will give you simple answer. A 1 lb. wrecking ball will eventually take down a wall. But a 10 lb. wrecking ball will take down faster and with more lethality. The 22 LONG RIFLE is NOT the standard for bullet proof vests. The 223 maybe. But this skin would have been shredded by a 223.

[scoobysncs4u]

11:52 AM on 08/20/2011

Plus the had to down size the load to probably a 22 short. Which in no way at all has the velocity of a 9mm. Don't think you understand velocity. A 9mm has 100 fps velocity more then a 22 long.

[Emily Thacker]

10:20 PM on 08/19/2011

I guess you can invent something completely new and have the first version of it work perfectly, at full capacity? Oh, you can't? That's what I thought.