Israeli scientists have come up with an organic material that is the strongest organic material yet known. To quote the article from Chemistry World "Peptide balls prove stiffer than steel". That just about says it all. It's lighter and cheaper to produce than Kevlar yet "diamond probes were the only thing that actually made an indentation" per the same article. Imagine lighter, less bulky body armor for soldiers and law enforcement officers etal, lighter spacecraft structures (more payload per unit of thrust) and the list just goes on and on. The kicker is that the core of these "super balls" is diphenylalanine, the substance at the core of the protein that forms the plaque present in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients. Wild, huh?
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