Super-Strong Synthetic Muscles Developed

Too Hot! wrote to mention a BBC article about extremely powerful synthetic muscles. From the article: "The most powerful type, 'shorted fuel cell muscles' convert chemical energy into heat, causing a special shape-memory metal alloy to contract. Turning down the heat allows the muscle to relax. Lab tests showed that these devices had a lifting strength more than 100 times that of normal skeletal muscle. Another kind of muscle being developed by the team converted chemical energy into electrical energy which caused a material made from carbon nanotube electrodes to bend."

Re:wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

100x more powerful than a normal skeletal muscle? Do they mean by mass? The article doesnt say. Otherwise saying that its 100x more powerful than X tells us nothing. The hydraulics on a backhoe are probably like 10000x more powerful than a normal skeletal muscle. Oh wait, maybe not if you're talking dinosaur muscles. Sheesh. What a stupid article.

Re:Yes, but...

[The Mgt]

Bush is way more frightening than any third world warlord.

Just wait, he'll be a third world warlord soon enough.

What about our bones?

[skam240]

one of the problems with lifting weight of this kind is whether or not our skeletons can take it. the bones in your limbs can only support so much weight. it doesnt do you any good to have the strength to lift a car over your head if it will break the bones in your arms in the process.

it strikes me that some sort of skeletal reinforcement will be needed before this can be used to its fullest extent.

Re:wtf

[Tx]

The article is dumb. 100 times as strong as skeletal muscle is a statement with no meaning unless you specify what exactly you mean

I agree with most of your post, but BBC aims their content at Joe Public, it's not a scientific journal. Joe public will read from that that if he replaced his muscles with these artificial muscles, he'd be able to bench-press a lot more than he can now. That's as much as he needs or wants to know, and more importantly, he'll absorb it before his short attention span is exhausted and he moves on to the celebrity gossip column.

The scientifically minded like you and I must seek other sources for more technical details, we can't expect publications aimed at the average Joe to provide the kind of detail we'd like on these stories.

Bones

[StikyPad]

Now all we need are super-strong synthetic bones to prevent this [weirdpicturearchive.com] sort of thing.