Science Saturday: 03/02

Welcome to this week’s Science Saturday everyone. Let’s jump right in and see what happened this week:

ScienceDaily: Spider silk could be used as robot muscles.

Researchers working with spider silk, which is already known to have an exteremely high tensile strength, have found that the silk produces a strong twisting motion when exposed to humidity. This discovery may be useful for developing actuators, and maybe even artificial muscles.

LiveScience: What’s wrong with Particle Physics?

The governing theory of particle physics explains everything about the subatomic world … except for the parts that it doesn’t. And unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of flattering adjectives that can be applied to the so-called Standard Model. Built up bit by bit over the course of decades, this theory of fundamental physics is best described as ungainly, hodgepodge and MacGyver-ed together with pieces of string and chewing gum.

UPI: SpaceX Dragon Launch

This morning around 3 AM, SpaceX Successfully launched a Dragon capsule, the first commercial spacecraft designed to carry humans, into space. The dragon capsule will perform a series of test maneuveres in orbit over the next few hours, before it attempts to dock with the ISS early on Sunday morning.

ScienceDaily: Hiding Black Hole

Astronomers have located a black hole that has been hiding in the Milky Way galaxy by observing the effects that the supermassive object has on a nearby cloud of interstellar gas. This black hole is one of more than 100 million black holes thought to exist in our galaxy alone. Space is terrifying.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading, and enjoy the weekend.