New Scientist: The spines of the sea mouse, or Aphrodita aculeata, have been used to create nanowires 100 times longer than existing methods allow—and much more cheaply. The sea mouse, whose body is covered in a dense mat of hairs, is actually a marine worm found in oceans such as the North Atlantic.
Its iridescent setae, or threads, are made of millions of submicroscopic crystals that reflect light, causing the distinctive red, green, and blue sheen. Florian Mumm and Pawel Sikorski at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim used the sea mouse’s setae as a mold to grow the wires by placing a gold electrode at one end and firing copper or nickel ions into the hollow channel from the other end. Their team has published its results in the June 2010 issue of the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
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